


Even a Traitor May Mend

by Sickdaysurfer



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Worship, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Chili is the perfect food for Avenging, Cinnybun Bucky Barnes, Cute butts for days, Depression, Domestic Fluff, Flashbacks, Fondue, Gear up pal, Hydra torture, Injury, Lightning Bisexuals, M/M, Motorcycle Rides, Natasha Bromanoff - Freeform, PTSD, Recovery, Red Room, Sam Fucking Wilson, Soft Recovery, Someone is getting wrecked and it's not the Harley, Suddenly Stucky, The Asset - Freeform, Tony Starks is a Bro, Top Steve Rogers, Touch-Starved Bucky Barnes, War flashbacks, Yoga Bucky, hydra conditioning, minor torture, sex happens, so many cuddles, spitfire Steve Rogers, thousand yard stare, winter soldier - Freeform, woah steeb oh no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-14 13:31:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16041443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sickdaysurfer/pseuds/Sickdaysurfer
Summary: It’s taken Bucky a miserable, lonely year to re-learn how to behave like a human. Escaping HYDRA took its toll on him, but when he sees that floating city on television screen, he knows his days in hiding are numbered. Finding Steve is the easy part: Steve has always been Bucky’s true north, the compass guiding him home. Once he finds him, though, he realizes just how much he still has to overcome. The Asset remains, tucked away, lurking beneath the recesses of Bucky’s mind throughout every breakfast, joke, and long overdue moment.HYDRA always finds a way to tear James Buchanan Barnes apart sooner or later. The only question is, will the version of himself that Bucky has spent the last years building be enough to protect him?





	1. House of Memories

**Author's Note:**

> All my heckin thanks to my Alpha Reader Featherflairs who literally took me under her wing a la Sam Wilson and guided me through this entire process with the patience of a saint.
> 
> Companion art created by the ever-patient Witchylurker who put up with me. Bless. 
> 
> This was my first ever fic and was way more of my blood, sweat and tears than I realized it would ever be. I wrote this in the midst of a move, planning my late September wedding and having two young boys stay with me, all on top of holding down a full-time Monday-Friday job. I have very patient co-workers. 
> 
> My Cinnybun Bucky Barnes and Spitfire Steve Rogers have seen me though some tough shit and I just wanna do them justice. <3 Thank you for reading, I hope you love our boys as much as we do!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The very same mission stands at the other end of the bridge, broad shoulders, stance riotous. The Asset knows from its soldier that the Mission’s mop of sun-gold hair hides under his helmet. It also knows the Soldier would writhe for this: the Asset’s mission here, so close to him.

The Asset knew this man on the bridge. 

It’s mask had been knocked off in the scuffle- cool air rushing suddenly around its face; transforming it’s skin from clammy and damp to live-wire sensitive. Ears now free, the tumult of the chaos flooded in. 

Screams, groans; cries for help. To its left, the Asset could see a woman cowering in her vehicle, tugging and straining against her seatbelt. Blood was drying in her hair, staining her shirt. The Asset could see it - dripping from the wound on her forehead and down her nose. It hefted the gun against its shoulder, took a deep breath and could smell smoke in the air. Uninhibited, the Asset could now exercise its jaw; eyes locked on the woman struggling in the car. The woman reached her up and wiped her lip on the back of her hand, her eyes going wide at the sight of the blood when she brought her hand away.

Suddenly, something deep within the Asset lurched, a charge of electricity bolting through every inch of its body as it watched the woman; the rust stain of blood on her hand, her crisp white shirt and- 

_“God, Buck. It was nothing, honest, I’m fine!”_

_Steve shoved Bucky’s hand off his shoulder, hefting himself up from the couch to stalk away from him towards the sink. He stood with a white-knuckle grip on the cracked countertop, spine bent and chest heaving. From his spot on the couch Bucky ran a hand through his hair, trying to force the greasy, frazzled mess back into place._

_“Stevie...” His feet carried him from the couch as Steve shrugged the suspenders off his shoulders, rolled up his sleeves to his elbows and swiped a rag from nearby to run under the sink. His feet ached from his double shift at the docks, his shoulders stiff from hauling boxes he’d long forgotten. No one cared if you were smart down there, only that you were strong. Bucky just did the work and tried not to think. But in spite of his aches, he lifted the damp cloth to Steve’s lip as the smaller man turned to him. Those big blue eyes stared up at him, emotion raw._

_A lump formed in Bucky’s throat as he watched Steve swallow down whatever damned pride had gotten him in this situation._

_Steve didn’t offer any explanation, and at this point, Bucky was too worn out to ask for one. Instead, he dabbed at the blood on Steve’s chin and watched his shoulders slowly relax, his grip on the countertop eventually loosening._

_Bucky tried to avoid Steve’s eyes: he could see the tears welling up there, could almost hear Steve begging them not to fall. It had been months since Steve had gotten himself into this kind of situation - a good few months. Sure, Bucky had been working a bit more often and he always came home tired, but Steve had been working at the local grocer’s. And that smile he came home with each day, the one he got from contributing to the community while interacting with neighborhood folks, it made Bucky’s heart ache. He’d never expected Steve to change, but he’d at least hoped that landing the spot at the grocer would have helped him gain some sense of self-preservation._

_Satisfied with the state of Steve’s face, Bucky moved onto his hands. The rust-colored stains of blood on his knuckles tugged at Bucky’s heart and he couldn’t help but sigh. Pale, lithe fingers curled around his left hand as Bucky’s right took care of cleaning. Steve winced just once and Bucky finally met his eyes._

_“ ‘m sorry, Bucky.” Steve finally mumbled. He sniffed and dropped his head, blond locks hiding his eyes from view._

_Bucky just couldn’t help it. He leaned in to press a kiss to Steve’s hair._

_He knew what everyone said, Christ, did he know. He knew the danger and violence around a man being in the arms of another man. But here was Steve, all the good he knew in this world, and Bucky had selfishly taken anything Steve was willing to give, never once looking back. Not since the day Steve had mumbled amidst a fevered delirium which brought his cracked, dehydrated lips to Bucky’s._

_Bucky had been so terrified for Steve’s health during that time that he hadn’t thought much about it. But the next day, after Steve’s fever had broken and he was able to bring a spoon to his mouth without assistance, Bucky had thought and thought- finally making his decision; he walked straight over to stand behind Steve and placed a kiss to his hair. Steve had bristled and stuttered, but remained silent. Bucky let his fingertips run down the porcelain skin of Steve’s arm, catching his wrist to watch as Steve balanced the spoon between his nimble fingers. Steve opened his mouth, then, and Bucky rolled his eyes at the words that tumbled out._

_“I can’t ask you to risk this.”_

_Bucky could have slapped him upside the head: Steve Rogers had never given two shits about risks in his life. Yet suddenly, here he was, curled up against Bucky and fighting his way out of a fever while trying to reason with him. Must’ve been some fever._

_Bucky should have told him everything- shut his eyes and confessed that he’d been in love with Steve since before he even knew what love was._

_That brash, beautiful Steve had always been his true north. He’d dreamt for years about it, through times of fever, illness, and too many deaths for either of them to cope with, Bucky had tied his worth to Steve Rogers’ soul._

_But he couldn’t tell him. Something in his heart was busy shifting into place - his mind was busy dredging up all the thoughts he’d ever had about Steve that he’d needed to shove down and swallow. They’d seen what happened to men like them. So, instead, Bucky pressed his face into the cool skin of Steve’s neck and made the age-old promise that held even more weight now._

_“I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”_

_And god, he meant it._

 

The Asset draws in a ragged breath and falters in its steps. It comes back to itself, a chill running down its spine. Sweat beads on its forehead, something twisting in its stomach as the scenes dancing in its mind space dissipates and fizzles out. Desperately, as though they’re made of air, the Asset tries to hold onto the ghosts but they’re gone just as swiftly as they’d come. 

It has taken a step towards the woman trapped in the car. 

Her wide eyes are locked on the Asset and the noises of the scene start to bleed together. Ringing in it’s ears - tinnitus. The Asset makes a note to inform the handlers to check for possible concussion during the next reset. 

“Bucky…?” 

The Asset’s eyes snap away from the woman. That voice had awakened the gut twisting feeling again. 

Sudden images seem to flash before the Asset: long, pale fingers fisted in a stained shirt, golden hair against a pillow- a young, deep voice breathing that name. 

The Asset knows this image from every bout of cryostasis: That name had belonged to whatever soul had lived within the shell that became The Asset. Sometimes it can still feel echoes of him stumbling around, lost, abused, begging for some kind of compass to chart his course back to the surface. 

The line, his voice whispers into the Asset’s empty thoughts. 

_Hold the line. Protect the line. Protect it._

The Asset knew this man was a soldier; knew he was a sniper by the way his voice hushed whenever it peered through a scope; the way he helped the Asset to still, to aim, to fire. It was in those moments they were one and the same. 

But right now he’s screaming. Something’s wrong. The essence of the man is thrashing, wild and untamed - desperate. 

Standing on the bridge is a man: tall, broad; built like a soldier but dressed in civilian garb. Golden hair. Wide, blue eyes - chest heaving. Whatever was twisting within the Asset lurched again. But now there was air on its cheeks and live-wire boldness that suddenly made its way out of the Asset’s mouth. It doesn’t know if the words are its own or if they belonged to the Soldier inside. 

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

Smoke explodes around the bridge and the command to fall back is called in the Asset’s comms device. Body numb and mind hazy, the Asset allowed itself to be collected and brought back to the location - the bank. The chair. Maintenance and recheck. The Asset recalled the signs of possible concussion and reports when prompted by the technician. 

The desolate soldier within him screams; begs to be released. 

_Hold the line. Protect the line. Hold the line. Protect the line._

The Asset wills its body submissive; its face compliant and blank throughout maintenance. 

They do not surrender the Asset back to its chamber. Instead, it remains in the chair, the soldier within scraping and digging for memories buried deep. 

The Asset knows these memories well: the Soldier fell. HYDRA saved what was left of the body and attempted to empty it of the soldier to make room for the Asset. But the soldier remained. This they do not know about. Hydra can never know that the Asset has allowed the soldier refuge; that it takes comfort, even, in his small presence. The Asset is not human, but the soldier’s presence allows it to understand them. 

They’d brought the Asset right to its handler from the Cryo-Chamber with no explanation, no briefing, no routine upkeep. They’d shoved the Asset into the chair and strapped it down. Its handler was standing at ease, face hidden by shadows. Tall and broad with golden hair, square jaw and set shoulders. The soldier had hoped for Steve. Steve. Bubbling to the surface with something desperate and primal, the Soldier supplied memories to the Asset willingly: 

_A silhouette in the shadow of a dangerous building, rushing at him hurriedly, pulling and yanking desperately at the restraints holding Bucky down._

_“Bucky, God. Bucky, it’s me. It’s Steve- Bucky…”_

_Bucky choked back a sob. The broad shoulders and new height, he doesn’t know. But that face, those sky-blue eyes and flaxen hair he’s known his entire goddamn life. The hands that made quick work of his restraints were larger than he remembered, but the fingers were just as nimble. Shoulders that had once been sharp and arms that had once held him gently now hauled him to his feet with a sudden movement._

_“Steve?” Bucky suddenly realized, “Steve.” He was dead, he’d been absolutely certain of that. He’d died on that table but Christ, he must have done something right in his life because God saw fit to send him exactly what he’d been praying for: Steve._

_Except this man before him wasn't really his Steve; not the Stevie he’d left behind in New York. This was the Steve he’d always prayed for, strong and healthy, a body to match that dumb pride that Bucky simultaneously adored and despised._

_“Come on, Buck, we’ve gotta go - now.”_

_Bucky staggered against Steve’s force and choked back another sob. He brought his hands up to frame Steve’s face - just to touch, to be sure. Death was a convincing mistress, he’d have to give her that. All around him was the stench of war, he could barely smell Steve beneath it. He wasn’t sure of the sounds escaping him, then, but he could tell that tears were on his cheeks. He closed his eyes. If this was death, he was ready. He’d take this Steve, as long as his own was safely back in Brooklyn._

_“God, Buck.” Steve breathed in him and set their foreheads together. “I- I thought you were dead.”_

_Bucky started to say, “Yeah, pal, that’s ‘cause I am.” But the words were lodged in his throat, a realization more terrifying than everything he’d been through in the past few weeks hitting him like a loaded freight car._

_Death had come, gone, and left him behind. She’d taken those poor souls Bucky had somehow outlived and left him._

_Bucky wanted- no, needed - to run his hands down this new Steve’s arms, to feel the pulse points at his wrists. He felt himself doing it, then, as if on his body’s own accords. But there they were, pulse hammering away as sounds in the background spiked something in his adrenaline. In a brief moment of realization, Bucky gathered that he was, in fact, very much alive._

_This new Steve was undeniably real, and he was somehow standing before him in this godforsaken enemy base where Bucky had spent the past who knows how many days being - being tortured. The thought made bile rise in his throat. He fought the urge to retch against words he so desperately needed Steve to hear. But he only thing that came out of his mouth was a shaky, pitiful:_

_“I thought you were smaller.”_

_Steve. God, Stevie, what have you done…_

  


The silhouette shifts and its handler steps forward, the Asset visibly wincing as the soldier within shrinks away. This man was not Steve. But those features, so similar to the man from the soldier’s memories, causing both the Asset and the soldier hiding away beneath to submit- all too eager to recite those words; to please and provide in order to keep violent hands at bay.

_Ready to comply._

The Asset wants to say those words as he sits in the chair. Caught high in its chest is the soldier within, struggling. 

_No._ The Asset tries to will him. _Not here. No, soldier._

“Mission report.” The handler demands. The Asset sets its jaw, swallowing down the soldier. 

_He was there!_ The soldier wants to shout and struggle, non-compliant. The Asset wills its body still. 

A sickening crack echoes throughout the lab and it takes the Asset a second to realize that the handler has struck.

Suddenly, the Asset wants to retch. It’s head throbs and the soldier’s memories dance before its eyes. 

“Mission report, _now.”_ The Handler demands. The Asset’s cheek is burning. 

Reeling, the Asset can’t figure out if the next words that escape its mouth are from the soldier or not,

“The man on the bridge… I knew him.” 

There’s a ringing in the Asset’s ears and it can't hear the Handler's response; can only watch as his lips move and he sits in front of the Asset. 

He’s aged, this handler, since the Asset was first introduced to him. Bright hair like sunshine has dulled; skin has aged and shoulders once broad and proud have shrunk just the slightest bit: the Asset knows though. Eyes once as blue as the Brooklyn summer sky are now steely and unwelcoming. Pierce, the Asset thinks ruefully, what an appropriate name for this handler. 

“We need you to do this one more time.” Pierce insists. 

It’s never just once more, the Asset knows somehow. The soldier within is lurching and the Asset longs for Steve’s paint smudged fingers and art-littered walls.

“But I knew him.” The Asset’s voice is broken, raw. 

The handler’s jaw sets and the Asset knows that it has made a terrible mistake. 

_Soldier,_ the Asset wills, _hide. Hide._

He knows what the handler is about it say before the words leave his lips. 

“Wipe him and start over.” 

The mouthguard is offered and the Asset takes it willingly. Compliance. Begs the soldier to retreat, to be safe, stay hidden. 

_Hold the line. Protect the line. Hold the line._

_I’m_ _**trying.** _

The machine is lowered and the screams that tear out of the Asset are its own, astonishingly not the soldier’s. When the pain clears, the Asset hears a whisper somewhere back in its mind again and can’t help the lurching of its thoughts. 

_Hold the line. Protect the line. Hold the line._

But the soldier is quiet then - the Asset feels no echoes in its mind and it silently begins to panic as the technicians prep for the mission. The panic is met with reprimand; efficient and painful. The Asset tries to crawl back into the recesses of the mind as far as it can to no avail. 

_Come on, Soldier,_ the Asset pleads like it knows how; learned from countless victims, a bone-chilling tactic that always gave even this fine polished machine a pause. _Something is wrong._

 

Without knowing how, the Asset is standing on another bridge - metal, this time. And high. 

The very same mission stands at the other end of the bridge, broad shoulders, stance riotous. The Asset knows from its soldier that the Mission’s mop of sun-gold hair hides under his helmet. It also knows the Soldier would writhe for this: the Asset’s mission here, so close to him. 

The orders are clear though, burned into the front of his mind and no consideration for the soldier can shake them. 

The Asset grits its teeth and tries to will its body over to the soldier as it watches a deep red patch spreads along the abdomen of the mission’s patterned uniform.

It had happened once before: the Asset had been able to will its body, mind, and faculties over to the soldier once. The Asset knows this, but knows nothing of why. The Asset reaches for the soldier within, trying to will him to the surface. 

_Like before,_ the Asset begs for the soldier like so many missions had begged for their lives. But the soldier doesn’t hear him and the Mission’s face is suddenly bloodied and distraught below the Asset. 

The Asset can hear the programming slurring from its mouth, feel the words choking in its throat. 

“You’re my mission,”

“Then finish it.” The Mission spits blood from his cracked lips, split and swollen as he stares up at the Asset. At that moment, their desires are one and the same: both looking for the soldier, praying and begging him to rise to the surface. 

“ ‘Cause I’m with you…” The Mission’s chest heaves with effort and the words are forced from his mouth, wet with blood and dripping in pain. 

Something abruptly lurches within the Asset, and if it weren’t so fucking confused it might’ve smiled. The Asset feels the soldier clawing his way back from where that chair had sent him. This, these words, and that bloodied face, called him back like a beacon. 

“til the end of the line…” 

Somewhere between the mangled wreckage of the helicarrier and the frigid, smothering water of the Potomac, the battered, frightened soldier sets an arm around the Asset and wills it to let him take over.

_Rest now. Let me._

When Steve coughs up water and takes a ragged breath, James Barnes begins moving back into the shadows, clumsy in a body that’s not been his own for decades. They’ll come for Steve, to heal him. Then they’ll come for The Winter Soldier, to kill him. This he knows.


	2. Time to Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seeing Natalia and Steve on the television stirred a longing within Bucky that’s settled into his bones over the last few weeks. He knows, as he glances around the apartment, that his days are numbered here. There are promises he’s made and time that he’s lost on them.

The charcoal pencil is shaking as Bucky hunches over his notebook. Unable to find sleep, yet again, he rubs a hand over his face and feels the stubble there - it alerts him that he is still in his own body. It’s a comfort. His fingers ache from clutching the pencil for so long, and it takes a great deal of concentration to form the shapes he hasn’t known for years. 

He’d always had good handwriting, this he knows somehow. But years of manual dock labor followed by decades of… absence… have left his muscle memory lagging and confused.

But something's happened, he can see it from the television in the cafe window where he sits: a city, split from the earth and making its way skyward. People on the screen are screaming, running, begging. Something within Bucky stirs and he brings his hands up to clutch at a phantom rifle that wasn’t there. 

On the street in front of the cafe, civilians murmured to one another. Phrases like “What do you think they’ll do?” “Where will the refugees go?” then, “Look, look! There they are!” 

A child is pointing at the screen and Bucky has to lean against the wall to keep himself upright.

Steve, in all his massive golden glory, was standing on that floating city. Bucky watched as the flying vessels collected civilians from the edge of the city and he could see that worry line on Steve’s forehead; feeling the urge to put his hands against that set jaw and run his thumbs along it until the hard set of his eyes softened. Bucky’s heart seemed to swell in his chest and he heard the steady, _shush, shush, shush_ of his blood pumping through his body. 

There was Steve: broad and noble in that goddamned clown suit, watching over the civilians with his battle face painted on. Bucky could see the gears turning in Steve’s mind; wishing he could will a table with a map before him; note the extraction points. 

There was a building behind Steve that still looked sound - that’s where Bucky should be. Not too far up, at least from the eighth floor so he’d be able to keep anyone, _anything,_ off Steve’s six so he could think and plan. He’d gotten real good at that once they’d had the Howlies: Stop and plan. 

From somewhere in the recesses of his mind, his memories provide a faceless voice, deep and drawling, military to the core: _Take a few minutes and none of our men will get killed, okay?_

On the television screen, a woman strode up from behind Steve and Bucky’s entire body suddenly ran cold. The sound of his blood pounding took over so much that he could barely register when one of the nearby civilians gasped,

“The Black Widow,”

Bucky stumbled as he rose from his seat, desperate to be closer to the screen and caught himself on someone’s sleeve. They didn’t seem to mind. He could feel the sweat on his neck and he stared at her on the screen; beside _Steve,_ for Christ’s sake. 

_They brought the girls to face the Asset one by one - gave it no instruction, so it remained still. Seated on a chair in the corner, each girl in turn regarded it with wide eyes, unsure and unmoving. A few just whimpered; one asked “Are you going to kill me?”_

_But the handlers hadn’t provided any instruction. So the Asset said nothing. Six girls in total were brought into in the small room then ushered out some time later. The seventh girl they brought in well after the sun had set and the large house was quiet._

_She was dressed in only a nightshirt, her red hair uncombed. As they pushed her into the room and she rubbed at her eyes, red and swollen with exhaustion and fear. She made a small noise as the lock on the door clicked into place and started to make her way over to the bed by the window. Stopped. The Asset could see in the girl’s body when she registered its presence. She turned slowly - had she been taught to do that? Had they told her to? She looked the Asset in the eyes. Her bare feet made no sound on the wooden floors as she padded over and stood before it. Hands at her sides, feet planted, shoulders unafraid; eye contact unwavering._

_Handler._

_“You’ll protect me.” She said simply. Not an order, not a question; what?_

_The Asset dared to meet her gaze then. In the moonlight streaming through the window, her pale skin seemed ghostly. She brought a hand up slowly, lithe fingers and a cool palm rested on the Asset’s face. So tiny. Big brown eyes softened and crinkled at the corners. Lips turned upward. Head, tilted. The Asset released a breath it hadn’t been aware of holding._

_“Yes,” the girl nodded, brought her other hand up to mirror the first, wiped away dampness on the Assets face that it wasn’t sure was real. “We are the same.”_

_The graduation ceremony came too soon. Years later and still too soon. The Asset felt his chest tighten when the girl had pulled the trigger; a sudden streak of noncompliance shot through the Asset and it willed itself to remain still. its hands itched to wrap the girl in its arms, to pat the mop of red hair and kiss her forehead._

_Why?_

_After, the Asset was instructed to escort her to the doctor. They walked side-by-side. Too close, too far. Her eyes were still wide. Her hands shook._

_“I can’t protect you,”_

_They’d reached the door, heavy and cold. The Asset regarded her eyes as his speech made her head snap up. She swallowed. Nodded. Set her jaw. She brought her hand up to the Asset’s face. There was no wetness this time._

_“You can,” she defied. Her brown eyes crinkled. Not enough, but some. “You will.”_

_The Asset opened the door for her and she slipped silently inside. The Asset knew that not all the girls made it out from the doctor. Knew that there would always be more girls. The Asset’s chest felt tight._

_This one, though._

_She slipped into the room with all the training they’d taught her; even the Asset missed her when it had first been brought there, been locked inside. She sat in the chair the Asset normally occupied. This time, it sat on the edge of the bed._

_Those big, brown eyes regarded it softly. She stretched out her hand. Metal glinted in the moonlight and the Asset’s chest lurched, no, not you too -_

_But she dropped a piece of metal into a palm the Asset couldn’t remember extending. Mischief danced on that young face and the Asset’s chest swelled. It tilted its head, watching with eyes trained to target. Broke contact; looked at the palm._

_Dog tags, something in the Asset’s mind stirred. The soldier’s voice for the first time, brought forth by this cunning little spider and clinking, frail metal necklace._

_Barnes, James Buchanan_

_“I will protect you,” the Asset confirmed._

_Afterwards, it could smell the surgery on her; see the blood running down her leg. In that moment, her frail body sagged against the Asset, exhausted from the graduation ceremony. Brave no longer, but meek and vulnerable. Through memories not its own, the Asset knew what to do. Wash, water, soup, sleep._

_Tucked into the small bed, the girl peeked up at the Asset with her wide eyes. Something within the Asset lurched and provided a similar scene: blond hair and blue eyes. Same expression, same tugging at the Asset’s chest._

_Years later, the soldier made good on the promise that the Asset had made the first night. In the bloodshed and noncompliance, he sheltered her with his body and located the man in the rafters silently._

_“Please,” his voice rasped from smoke and misuse. From one sniper to another. His girl had her eyes closed, that mop of red hair was matted with blood and her pale skin was somehow thinning with blood loss. The man looked at the soldier; looked at his girl. A radio crackled._

_“Barton. Barton I’ve lost the target. Do you have eyes on them?”_

_The man bent down and checked her pulse, she’s a strong one. She’ll pull through for them. He regarded the soldier with eyes unreadable._

_“I’ll protect her,” he vowed. The soldier sagged where he stood, reached out to rest a worn hand on that thin, soft cheek._

_“Natalia,” he told the man. Gave up his charge into the arms of the enemy that even the Asset knew is safer than with the handlers. “Natalia.”_

_The man nodded once and speaks into his radio, “I’ve got her. There’s been a change in plans.” He backs away and the soldier watches him take her away. Wetness on his cheeks and a noise he’s never heard before tear through his throat. But the man doesn’t look back._

_The soldier is incapacitated, collected, and that’s when they bring him to the chair for the first time. Wetness stream onto his face as he retreats with images of his red headed charge and dreams of blond hair and blue eyes snuggled close._

_The Asset holds them all in secret._

 

The charcoal pencil snaps where it is held in Bucky’s fingers and he runs a hand through his hair, risking a quiet groan. He looks at the six other halves of pencil he’s created in the past few hours, and reaches for the little plastic sharpener by his foot. As he straightens his back, his ears pick up a scuffling outside his door. 

He stills. Holds his breath. Blood Flow sounds heavy and rushed in his ears as his eyes scatter about the scarce apartment. Flesh fingers set the pencil on the bed and pluck the knife out of his boot in one fluid motion. Flip it. Lean forward, weight on the balls of his feet. Waiting. 

Within him, Bucky can feel the Asset perking up. A constant presence at the back of his mind, placed there decades ago with the intention of driving him out had instead saved him. Tucked away, Bucky remembered some of the Asset’s moments, movements. Static crowds Bucky’s thoughts as he - it - glances about the apartment, tiptoeing to the surface of consciousness, desperate to fulfill the orders that the soldier had given throughout the years.

_Hold the line. Protect the line. Hold the line._

Two newspaper-wrapped windows: secured. Back door: opens up to high balcony with optimal sight lines to street and buildings below and beside. The window on the back door allows for a sight line to the front door: currently bolted shut. The heavy wood of both doors, reinforced since Bucky decided to settle in this safehouse, could provide momentary cover against most close-range firearms. Eyes dwell on the floorboards that had been ripped up and replaced to conceal the backpack, still hidden, placed with care by the soldier for the Asset. 

A knife in the weak hand, the steady press of a handgun where its settled in the waistband of its pants. Foolish, soldier. In a pinch, the kitchen utensils could also prove useful, this the Asset knows. The refrigerator can function as a barrier. A shield. The Asset hears the patter of steps, recognizing the pattern of the old man who lives across the hall: a neighbor, that’s all. The elderly prove a minimal threat. The Asset’s lips turn upwards as it wills its blood to calm in its ears and thinks about the ridiculous image of using a refrigerator door for protection. 

The soldier provides 

 

_The air slices through the flaps of the military tent with almost comical ease as Bucky sits on the cot, turning his hands over before him, pressing his nails into his palm. These are his hands, calloused and cracked, weathered and worn… why does he feel as though they’re not?_

_Out of the corner of his eye, he spots that red, white and blue shield leaning against a tent pole: regal, curved top, that large star flanked by subordinates; rounded sides tapering to a pointed finish sporting picket-fence stripes. Too bright, almost comical._

_Bucky lets out a breathe he hadn’t known he was holding and rose to his feet, padding over to the shield. It looked so simple; really it looked as though it had been created to be a -_

_A stage prop._

_The realization whacks Bucky upside the head as he picks up the tin sheet as easily has he could have hefted his own shirt. Barely an inch thick, Bucky takes hold of that crown-like swoop at the top and forces his wrists to turn inwards towards each other. The center star yields tragically under such minute effort. Bucky’s foot makes contact with the helmet that had sat beside the shield and he can feel disgust mounting on his face, the itch to bring his boot down upon that mocking stage-girl prop gnawing at him._

_Steven Grant Rogers had single handedly stormed a HYDRA base with scavenged tin stage props._

_“Motherf-”_

_“Oh, hey, B-”_

_Bucky’s brain catches up with him moments later: he finds himself crouched low, tin shield held out in front of his body despite the fact that he’d just established what shit protection it provides. Steve stands before him, hands raised to his chest in the universal sign for non-lethality. Blue eyes wide, Steve kicks away the helmet that’s somehow wound up dented at his feet. There’s a pink welt starting just above his left brow. Steve takes a tentative step forward, extending a hand._

_“Buck,” he starts._

_“Fuck, Steve, these are goddamn stage props!” Bucky growls. He’s on his feet, now, shoving the shield into Steve’s broad chest. Steve’s hands shoot back up, fingers splayed, though he doesn’t resist. “Where did you find this shit? In chorus lockers? Don’t answer that!”_

_Steve shuts his mouth._

_“You snuck into a fucking HYDRA base with a tin foil hat and a goddamned dinner plate, Steve!”  
Bucky knows Steve can see the fear written on his face; feel as his body begins to lean heavy against Steve. With his next words, Bucky’s voice cracks and a sound akin to a sob escapes his throat,_

_“I thought you were at home in Brooklyn where it’s safe,” Bucky lets Steve slip the shield from his hands and close the distance between their bodies. “And you show up behind enemy lines decked out to put on a show, Steve, what were you-”_

_“Shh,” Steve’s arms wrap around Bucky and press him against his chest. The costume itches against Bucky’s cheek and he registers dampness - it hadn’t started to rain since his debriefing, had it?_

_“No, Steve,” Bucky insists. Another sob tears itself from his throat as he dares to pound a fist against Steve’s new chest: broad, muscled, clear of any rasping. Steve holds fast, unwavering. “You don’t understand, you could’ve-”_

_“But I didn’t, Buck,” Steve cuts in. He suddenly cups Bucky’s face in his hands, wiping away tears. “I told you, I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”_

_This time, Bucky shuts his mouth and allows Steve to maneuver him back onto the cot. Steve plops down behind him and wraps an arm around his waist like it’s not the strangest sensation for Bucky to be held, this time by Steve rather than Bucky. Bucky releases a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and reaches to clasp Steve’s fingers with his own._

_“You should write to the Andrews Sisters when we get back stateside,” He finally succumbs after moments of silence, “see if they need a blundering meathead to add to their act.”_

_He feels Steve’s chuckle against his spine; hears it clear and low - waits for the crackling mucus sounds that never come. Something in his own chest loosens and as another tear slips from his eyes, he dares to thank whatever crackpot doc shoved his Steve full of who-knows-what to send him all the way out here._

_Steve’s lips press into Bucky’s hair and Bucky glances over to the shield where they’d left it. As he closes his eyes, voices float in through the tent flaps; Bucky singles one out from the others:_

_Howard Stark._

Bucky’s fingers clutch at the charcoal pencil and he taps his boots against the floorboards. Shaking cobwebs out of the front of his mind, he looks down at the rudimentary scribble that the Asset has left him with on the final page of the notebook: three shaky circles, one inside of the other with a lopsided star in the center. He feels his mouth turn up in a smile. Considering the alternative, Howard Stark had done a damn good job of making sure Steve had some decent protection. 

Pushing to his feet in the small space, Bucky feels a sudden ache in his chest and glances down at his notebook. He’s almost filled every page now, after a few months. The rest of his notebooks are secure beneath the floorboards of his small apartment. He’s been here for a year, he notices as he passes the calendar on the wall on his way to the fridge. It’s been a year since he’d struggled to the surface of his own mind and gained control over his body - a year of re-learning how to eat, shit, piss and sleep uninhibited. 

Filling page after page in the notebooks had helped him to sort out everything flashing before his eyes; flashing in his mind. The months blurred together as he mapped out his life on crinkled pages, stained with literal blood, sweat and tears. Six notebooks, twelve months, and a jarring decision made after he’d seen Steve there on the cafe television: a blessed beacon of pigheaded nobility and strength. Bucky had fought against hitting his knees right there on the dirt. 

He wasn’t sure where he stood with God after the decades he’d robbed from others and the things that he’d done, but he decided then that he couldn’t be too poor off. The one to complete his gospel came the muted glow of the same who had saved him; seen him through the bared teeth and bloodlust of the Asset, had known his worth. Older, now, but that sharp chin jutted with determination and the nostrils flared, just as they had in the moonlight of the Red Room, gentle Natalia took Bucky’s face in her hands and piped in her small voice that she would never leave him behind, her мать медведь: mother bear. 

He’d known better than to make her the same promise. Instead, his vow had been the only one he could ever have made her: I will protect you. The Asset had been able to make good on it, when a mission had gone sour and something within had turned the operation over to Bucky. He’d given her to Hydra’s enemy, having seen the expression on the man’s face, recognized it from decades ago as he’d plummeted from a train car. His vow would be safe with that man, too: the archer. 

Seeing Natalia and Steve on the television stirred a longing within Bucky that’s settled into his bones over the last few weeks. He knows, as he glances around the apartment, that his days are numbered here. There are promises he’s made and time that he’s lost on them. He’ll gather himself in the morning. 

For now, he unwraps a protein bar and chews, lost in thoughts about the words that are needed for the task ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates are Tuesdays and Thursdays!


	3. King of the Clouds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “God, see fit to grant us poor souls the serenity to accept the things which we cannot change, courage to change the things we’re able; and wisdom to know the difference.”
> 
> A hushed round of “amen,” bounces against the concrete walls and Bucky feels his voice chime in; a smile tugging at his lips as he thinks of a pair of wide blue eyes and that shock of golden hair.

Bucky had done his research; knew that Peggy Carter had a nephew somewhere out in California who’d never been to the facility before. Naturally, it’s the nephew’s name he gives to reception. The young woman asks for ID and Bucky gives her a false one with the nephew’s information under his own photo. Catching up on technology gave him migraines, but the familiarity of knowing where to look for things on the New York streets succeeded in settling his mind. 

He is waved along and it takes him only moments to ascend the stairs to the third floor, where he stands outside of Peggy’s room. 

This is no place for her. The institution of it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Nameless people, always different, entering and exiting, pushing her to swallow this, eat that, drink those. One room, small and cramped: sit, sleep, eat, piss. 

Heat rises on Bucky’s skin as he thinks of the Peggy that Steve had left behind: sharp as a tack and worth their whole unit combined. Ruthless, gorgeous, fair. 

Now she is stashed away out of sight, pitied and imprisoned. He thinks of how it must be for Steve to come to her - knows he does, because from where Bucky stands outside the door, he can see a sketchbook sitting on the bedside table. 

He knocks, then, stepping closer so that the entirety of the little room comes into view.

There she is: tucked into the bed and propped up on pillows with a sleeved nightshirt on. Her face shows her years, but her hair is still perfectly presented, if now gray instead of that brunette Steve favored so much. Her jaw is firm as she turns her gaze on him, and all at once he is Sergeant James B Barnes of the 107th, it is 1945, and he is inadequate in every way that has ever mattered. Tears spring to his eyes as she watches him step closer. 

“James,” 

He’s kneeling beside the bed with her frail hand clasped between his own before she’s even finished calling him by the name he never thought he would be worthy of again. She is so frail. He brings her hand to his cheek, unable to look her in the eye. His metal fingers are gingerly wrapped around her wrist and he feels her pulse there, weaker and slower than he had expected. Her eyes are soft as she studies him, but Peggy doesn’t pull her hand away. He is careful; so careful with her. 

Decades of doing the work of ten men have taken a toll on her, and that inadequacy curls in Bucky’s stomach, settles like a weight as he wishes he could have been there; if not to help then to see all of the jackasses that she would have proved wrong: all the assholes she had beaten. He runs a rough hand over hers and smiles, recalling the story that Steve had told him so long ago about how Peggy had laid that mouthy recruit out flat his first day of basic. 

Inside, the Asset purrs.

Handler, it considers that version of Peggy. 

Not like Pierce or any of those under Hydra or the Red Room, no, this was a handler that the Asset would obey willingly. Compliant without coercion. 

“Agent Carter,” Bucky’s voice leaves him in a plea. She is still much the same woman; he is still desperate for her validation. 

“No, James.” She shakes her head and rubs her thumb against his cheek. “No, that hasn’t been my title for some years now. Here, I’m only Peggy.” 

Bucky shakes his head, adamant. He draws is a shaky breath and knows Peggy can feel the tears that escape his eyes from where her hand is pressed to his cheek. There are always tears, now. 

“Steve told me you were alive.”

Bucky can only nod. His emotions are packed too high, too tightly in his throat for anything else. If he utters any sound, a sob will escape. But Peggy just smiles, gentle. 

“He told me he was going to go after you, to find you and bring you home. I told him, ‘Steve, if I know anything about James, it’s that he’s much better at handling his pride than you are.’” 

Bucky smiles, then, too: just a small thing that doesn’t truly reach his eyes. She’s right. 

“You can imagine he wasn’t very happy with me,” Peggy continues, “I made him promise me to let you handle this on your own. He demanded to know how I could be so sure of you. I told him the truth: we are the same, James, you and I.” 

She brings his chin up, forces him to look her in the eyes. He sees forgiveness there; the validation that he’d been so desperate for. “We’ll always return to Steve.” 

Bucky nods. Then, 

“Im afraid,” he admits, “I’m not who I was before,” 

“None of us are, dear, after so many wars.”

Bucky releases a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding. He is suddenly shaking, wracked with sobs and he buries his face in Peggy’s blanket. She runs her fragile hand through his hair, working out the knots that have found their way into the tresses. 

“Did you treat Steve any different, back when his parts didn’t match up?” She asks after a moment, “When he found you at Azzano, there were no modifications you had to make in your interaction: I’d seen it. I’ll bet you a tenner that the way you’d treated him back when he was on the streets of Brooklyn, getting beaten up in what seemed like every alley we’d drive past, that you never worried about his physical abilities. You took him for who he was inside, his spirit. All the rest of them had to make adjustments to the way that they saw Steve after Erskine, but nothing you ever did was forced. You loved him just the same; encouraged him to be strong no matter the circumstance.” 

Bucky sniffles and nods, face remaining hidden in the blankets. But Peggy’s still carding her hand through his hair, she doesn't miss the movement. 

“James, it is the same instance here.” She whispers. “After everything you’ve been through, some parts don’t match up within you, either. And if Steve can’t manage to have patience with you, then you march him right over here and I’ll set him straight like I did with that terrible Gilmore Hodge, remember that story?” 

Bucky smiles, lifts his head. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, “that jackass, what an asshole,” 

Peggy laughs out loud, tossing her head back onto her pillows, patting Bucky’s cheek again, 

“Oh, James, we’ve missed you.” She murmurs. He leans forwards and sets his lips against her fragile cheek.

“I’m sorry it took me so long, Peggy.” his heart aches as she regards him with those steely eyes, somehow so full of kindness in this moment. 

“Promise me that you won’t go too soon, James. Promise me that you’ll learn yourself first, before you find Steve. Put yourself first, and then join him. Take care of yourself.” This is a vow that Bucky can make - he’s already taken so much time; he’s near the end now. Peggy must know that, though, or she wouldn’t ask this of him: to make the last few necessary steps alone when every fiber of his being is demanding proximity to Steve. 

“It won’t be long, Peggy, but I promise.” 

“You’re a good man, James Barnes.” 

I was. Bucky allows himself to think. He gathers his coat and kisses Peggy again; promises that he will return the following week. Peggy’s smile is soft as she threads her cold fingers in his and gives his hand a weak squeeze. 

“Be safe, dear.” She bids him goodbye. 

Bucky finds himself in a church several hours after visiting Peggy, sitting among the pews with his head hung low, fingers running along the cracked spine of a bible that looked like it had definitely seen better days. He’d been in a couple of churches on his way to this one, but each of them seemed too gaping, too open, too expectant. This one he’d found tucked away between an apartment building with missing shutters and a soup kitchen. It was small, smelling faintly of mothballs and antique perfume. When he closed his eyes he could see the small apartment of his youth, back when Steve sat at the forefront of his unmangled mind. 

A large, polished wood cross hangs behind the small pulpit with chipped paint. There are some candles, too, though they are unlit. In total, the church has just twenty pews: two rows of ten with a narrow aisle. Large windows flank each side of the building, though the only view is into the curtained windows of either building beside it. There is no loft - Bucky isn’t sure how that makes him feel. Two doors, one to the back of the building that he had used as an entrance, and one leading to a hallway are propped open. Bucky can hear quiet murmurs coming from the hallway, but he knows they pose no threat. He sits there, silently in the pew busying his hands with pages filled of tiny script that makes his head ache, wondering if he even has the worth for any of this. After all that he’s done, there is no amount of sitting in any damned pew that can make a difference: that he’s certain. 

He thinks back to thin shoulders and blond hair and too many split lips where he’d centered his soul back in 1935 and closes his eyes. Peggy had told him that neither of them would be the same after the decades they’d endured, but in the backpack by his feet is an info pamphlet from the Smithsonian Exhibit on Captain America that he’d visited the night before. Even with whatever bland photos they’d used to shove a man from the wrong era headfirst into the 21st century, Bucky wants to follow him with every fiber of his being; no matter how much had changed. From the moment Steve had murmured his name on the bridge, something within Bucky had begun to share everything he could with the Asset in hopes that he could get the chance. 

He reaches with his strong hand, gloved with the sleeve pulled all the way down, up to grasp the dog tags he had somehow managed to keep through all these years. They clinked together and the sound begins to grind him. He opens his eyes to the warm light of the church, feeling like it was from another era: just like him, just like Steve. 

A woman catches his eye: she is small, soft pale skin and old. Her white hair is piled upon her head and she’s regarding him with an unreadable gaze from where she stands, pausing in the doorway leading to the hallway. 

“Are you planning on staying the night, young man?” She asks. 

In her voice there is a drawl that sits in the Back of Bucky’s throat and he can’t help but dredge up some of the charm he’d known in the past as he nods his head and stands. His hands clutch his backpack. 

“If that won’t be too much trouble, ma’am.” 

“That’s for you to decide, there, young man.” Bucky likes her already. She nods in the direction of the other door, the one at the back of the sanctuary. The name tugs at the corner of Bucky’s lips. He almost chuckles: _young man._ “Close that one shut but leave it unlocked. I’ll show you downstairs.” 

Bucky does as she’s asked, keeps his posture non-lethal, though his fingers curl around the knife hidden in the pocket of his jacket. The jacket is too thin for the crisp fall weather, but he’d fished it out of a bin and the sales tags had still been attached so he didn’t pass it by. 

There are others down in the basement of the church, occupied with placing rolled-up bed mats on the floor and unrolling them. This scene tugs at Bucky’s chest and he’s transported back to the desolate city of Paris in 1938; bedrolls set around a roaring fire with soldiers all weary, damaged, lost. There is no fire here in the church basement, but the company is familiar. These people are chatting with one another, exchanging pleasantries and news as the old woman goes to a cupboard on the wall and gets out a bedroll, handing it to Bucky. He tries his best smile, but knows she sees right through it. 

She clucks her tongue and regards the others around them, 

“No funny business, you hear me?” Her tone is sharp but the look in her eyes is gentle. She regards each of the guests in turn, six haggard, worn men; settling on a young girl for longer than the others. 

Her hair is shaved short, her dark skin a contrast to the men around her. Her denim jeans are torn and her jacket, also, seems too thin for the outside weather. The men of the group are older in appearance, their faces hardened and shoulders sagged from their rough lifestyle. 

“Yes, Miss Edna.” they chorus [obediently]. 

Placated, Miss Edna nods. She pats Bucky on the shoulder and he knows that she doesn’t miss the way that his body tenses. She gives his bicep a little squeeze of apology. 

“Instant oatmeal and coffee on the table for the morning,” She gestures to a card table in the corner, holding a battered wicker basket with instant oatmeal packets, a microwave, a large canister of instant coffee and a sleeve of paper cups. A box of plastic spoons sits atop the microwave. “Bedrolls tucked and all traces gone by 7am, you hear me?”

Another chorus of “Yes, Miss Edna.” Bucky nods his head. Miss Edna regards him once more, but doesn’t make him introduce himself to this obviously familiar grouping. For that, he is grateful. One more pat on the shoulder and she shuffles down the hall, out of sight. 

The young girl tosses her bedroll in front of the radiator and the men line theirs up along the opposite wall. Bucky takes the hint and follows suit, though he places his bedroll in an unoccupied corner, unwilling to risk closeness. 

This corner is good: sightlines to the hallway leading to the stairs, a solid basement door, and a door marked LAVATORY in chipped paint. Someone switches off the main lights and Bucky notices the young girl has plugged a small night light into an electrical outlet near the radiator. None of the men mutter a word, save one gravely voice that pipes up after a quiet moment,

“God, see fit to grant us poor souls the serenity to accept the things which we cannot change, courage to change the things we’re able; and wisdom to know the difference.”

A hushed round of “amen,” bounces against the concrete walls and Bucky feels his voice chime in; a smile tugging at his lips as he thinks of a pair of wide blue eyes and that shock of golden hair. 

 

_Bucky opened his eyes to the smell of gunfire burning his nose and a command frozen in his throat._

_He gripped his rifle in his hands and turned to George, but where the man had just been moments before now lay a frightened, dying boy pleading for mercy. Bullets whizzed past and Bucky tried to gather George into his arms. George screamed out. Another man from the 107th rushed over and clamped his hand over George’s mouth._

_“Hush, boy!” His voice cracked, though, and his wild eyes were strained. A grenade nearby tossed dirt and debris over them. “Sarge, he’ll never make it back.”_

_Bucky regarded the other man - Ron? Ralph? God, he couldn't remember. George was whimpering, laying in a dark pool that grew with every passing second. His cheeks paled with each ragged breath that became wetter and wetter. His eyes skittered to the pistol on Bucky’s hip; back up to meet Bucky’s eyes. Firefight flashed and Bucky knew what George’s eyes held then. Bucky set his jaw and reached for George’s tags, lifting them over his head. He pocketed them, feeling like they weighed ten pounds as they sat in his jacket. He couldn’t know if the prayer leaving his mouth ever reached George’s ears or even if God himself could hear it over the screams and gunfire, but as he steadied his gun against the suffering, dying boy on the ground, he felt himself saying the words anyhow._

_“O God, who seest that in this warfare we are seeking to serve thee, and yet in the waging of it must needs do many things that are an offence against thy love; Accept we pray thee, our imperfect offering. Arm us with thy Spirit that our warfare may further the victory of thy justice and truth; Amen.”_

_George heaved a breath and closed his eyes. Bucky closed his own - made that breath poor George’s last, and Roger - that was it, Roger - pulled Bucky to his feet, his voice carrying across the sector,_

_“Sarge says fall back! Forget the line and retreat to safety! Get back to base!”_

_Roger heaved Bucky along, but they didn’t get far before Bucky hit the dirt and retched whatever pitiful rations his stomach held into the forest. Roger didn’t let them stop for long - hauling Bucky to his feet again and guided him and his men back to base himself. Bucky didn’t hear the scream that tore through their line,sening chaos free on them again, until it was too late. He heard it too late, from one of the men in the back,_

_“Grenade!”_

 

Bucky gasps, bolting awake, smacking his head against a concrete wall he’d settled too close against the night before. Someone has turned on the lights in the church basement and the others there are sitting up on their bed rolls, regarding him with knowing eyes. The door to the lavatory is open and Bucky stumbles inside, emptying his stomach into the porcelain bowl. Tears sting his cheeks and his body is wracked with powerful, ugly sobs. No one makes a sound in the basement, but he can hear movement. No one comes close until much, much later when Bucky wipes his mouth on a paper towel, exiting the lavatory to see the young girl standing there with a paper cup filled with water. 

Shoulders square, feet apart, chin held up; her eyes ground Bucky as she studies him. War is there, in her delicate face. Bucky says nothing as he takes the cup and downs the water. its cool down his throat and he’s instantly aware of the sweat beading his forehead and neck. He uses his sleeve for it. 

The young girl regards him with those eyes: steady, sure, evaluating. 

Handler. The Asset within him wants to submit, to comply. Bucky looks away from her, studies the empty paper cup in his hands. 

“Did they make it out?” She asks. Her voice is hushed, but Bucky knows that the men on the other side of the basement can hear them. The space is small, after all, and with a group as familiar with one another as this seems to be. Bucky’s willing to bet there are more sleepless nights spent here than restful. 

“Not all of them.” is the only answer he allows himself to give. 

He’s dizzy suddenly, and his shoulders ache. The girl reaches out; Bucky jerks away. She steps back, her expression never faltering. Thin, metal tags clink about on the chain around her neck and Bucky notices more than one set preserved there, the type too small to make out. Turning away, Bucky tugs the sleeve down farther on his metal arm, balling it into his gloved fist. He wills himself back to his mat in the corner and rifles through his backpack for the newest notebook, swiped from a bodega during his first thirty minutes in the city. 

Bucky’s not sure of the time as the others shuffle back to rest on their mats, but no ones makes any intent to turn off the overhead lights. The young girl goes only as far as to remove the small night light from the wall and stow it away in her pack. Bucky risks a glance through the hair hiding his face, nostalgia swelling up in his gut. The gears on his left arm whirr softly: problematic. The Asset listens to the sounds intently, taking notes. 

Quickly, it scribbles in the notebook: Mission report

_21 September_

_Approx 13 months without maintenance of permanent weapon._

 

A scowl finds it way to Bucky’s lips and he crosses out the words hurriedly. _Arm,_ he reminds himself; reminds the Asset. 

_It’s an arm._

When the others in the basement begin stowing their bedrolls in the cabinet and shuffling around the card table, putting together cups of oatmeal and instant coffee, Bucky remains on his mat in the corner. He only goes to the station when the others have cleared away. 

When the others have cleared out of the basement and he hears footsteps above, only then does he roll up his mat and triple check his pack: six notebooks, a stolen toothbrush, and there at the bottom is that solid object that he’d somehow been unable to part with. He’d found it in an abandoned Hydra base he’d raided for fun, and the Asset within had perked up at the sight of it, brought Bucky’s arm up on its own volition and slipped the mask into the backpack. 

Now, something clenches in Bucky’s chest as he zips the pack closed and heaves himself to his feet. He rolls his shoulders and his left arm whines in protest. Before he can fix that, he knows where he needs to go: Natalia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We update on Tuesdays and Thursdays! This week was crazy because I got MARRIED to my best friend on Saturday and then went on a lil mini honeymoon and everything was 10/10. Now that we're back in the real world, Tuesdays and Thursdays will be our concrete update schedule. Thanks so much!


	4. Collar Full

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suddenly the space between them is almost threatening, larger than the ocean Steve had crossed to join him on the front lines, larger still than that literal fiery chasm he’d vaulted across in Azzano; than the mountain pass he’d fallen down from the train, and the silence seemed longer than those seventy years separated. 
> 
> “You’re such a jerk,” and Steve is moving into Bucky’s space just as he’s forming the word “punk,” on his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure: I 100% Google Translated the Russian. Grain of salt, my friends!

Natasha knew he would come. 

Decades ago he’d sat with her through the night while shedding tears for his lost soldier, confessing vows he’d made in quick-set tents and foxholes as bullets and screams rained around them. She’d worried for him, that the end of the line had come, gone, and left him behind. 

But when the rescue team found Captain America buried in the arctic, pulse hammering through his body; and again years later, battered but breathing on the banks of the Potomac, Natasha had known that it would only be a matter of time before Sergeant James Barnes returned for his Captain.

She would have never guessed, though, that the Asset would come for her first. 

The Asset had positioned itself in the center of the room; the most vulnerable position in the whole of the apartment. It was just as scarce as the one it and the soldier had spent the last several months in: a testament to the years both of them had lived as shells, now training for reintegration.

Into what, who knows? 

She would be coming through the door, soon; they’d been watching her movements. 

But then, she would know that. After all, the Asset had been the very one to train her. 

The Asset didn’t have to wait long, could read the look of surprise as she stepped through the door. She’d been expecting to find it, sure, but not in the most exposed spot in the room. 

The Asset had to move the coffee table back three feet just to be able to stand in the space. Heavy boots pressed their pattern into the carpet and no doubt had tracked mud inside. 

She approached slowly, no part of her training forgotten and the Asset knows she, much like itself, holds no less than three concealed weapons on her person at all times. The Asset wills itself still, hands hanging by its sides. With each step Natalia takes towards him, the soldier creeps into consciousness. He knows the words she’s waiting for; the signal of safety that are, frankly, decades too late.

With any luck, God will hear this prayer now. 

“привет, ребенок медведь,” he murmurs. 

His voice is cracked and his Russian slides off his tongue thick with the fear that it carries for both of them. But these words, in this space, spread a smile across her face, reaching her eyes and wrinkling her nose as her body relaxes instantly. _Hello, baby bear._

Thin, light fingers reach out to caress Bucky’s face, to wipe away the tears that fall unbidden. Golden sunlight falls on her red hair, tamed and worked smooth through the years, and Bucky knows now that this is the right course to plot a path of forgiveness: his chapel lies within the souls of those he left behind. 

“Mother bear, I’ve missed you.” Natalia whispers, her hand movings from his cheek to wrap her arms around him. 

Her small frame presses against his chest and she makes no sound as he slips both arms,flesh and machine, over her shoulders to squeeze tight - years overdue, there are no words for the forgiveness she offers. Bucky takes it, eyes puffy with tears glancing skywards. 

Here, his little bear has made a life for herself: she’s successfully brought back the gentle soul the Red Room had fought to hollow out of the weapon they saw her for. 

Older, now, wiser and weighted down by decades of bloodshed, both their ledgers were dripping red; this they know. 

But as Bucky pulls back from her and cups Natasha’s face in his hands, to really look upon her, to see the length of road he’s standing before and the demon she’ll have to face, he can't help the smile that tugs at his lips. 

“I’m so proud of you,” he chokes out, “Natalia, I- I never lost hope. I thought of you every day. I prayed every chance I got that somehow you’d be able to- I could never-” He clears his suddenly obstructed throat, “I promised you.”

“I remember.” Natasha smiles easily, spares him from the words he’s too terrified to say. 

“And you found him,” Bucky says next, drawing in a ragged breath. 

“That was my promise to you, don’t you remember?” 

And abruptly, he does remember: a vulnerable night following a mission with too many lives snuffed out and far too much violence. 

 

_He’d helped her wash the blood from her hair and suddenly felt Steve’s name leave his lips: in her he’d confided the secret that no one should have known._

_Constructed as a weapon, the Asset steeled its jaw and set the broken bone of Natalia’s wrist. She’d cried out, and the soldier had whipped to the surface, drawing her close, wrapping her wrist carefully and kissing her hair._

_“When we leave here we’ll find your soldier,” she had murmured to him as she’d falled asleep in his arms, “and we will tell him that we love him.”_

_“We?” Bucky had asked, but Natalia had only smiled and snuggled closer to him. Her pale skin glowed in the bright moonlight of the Red Room and Bucky’s eyes were cast skywards in prayer, if not me, then her._

_Please, God, let her be free. You can keep me here, but she is too pure for this bloodshed._

 

“Now you can tell him yourself.” 

Natalia’s voice brings him back: luxe carpet beneath his hands where he now sits on the floor of her apartment. Soft evening light casts against cream-colored walls and the shadows are soft between the silhouette of hands covering his face. Bucky looks up to her, shaking hands lowering. She holds out a glass of water. 

“I can take you to him.” 

Bucky swallows down the water. He considers her offer for a long moment. 

“I want to know what I’ve missed,” he decides. “before you take me. I want to know who he is now. He might not-” Bucky clears his throat, overwhelmed by the sudden emotion lodged in his chest. 

Natalia crouches beside him on the floor, her posture non-lethal and eyes soft. Gingerly, she brushes the hair away from his eyes, setting her hand back to his cheek: it is a technique she learned from Bucky, from another life in the Red Room. 

The touch begins to ground him; to remind him of his body. He’s unsure of what will come next, but could have never expected the safe haven her words provide.

“I sought him out, you know. After they found him and thrust him into this new world. We had a mission, sure, and you had told me so long ago no one was better at strategy than him. You should have seen the way he protected the people from those Chitauri invaders; the way he fought for them. He’s their man, after all: _Captain America._ ” the both emit a little scoff, a mutual agreement of the sentiment: damn that title. 

“But he was not the soldier you’d told me about years ago. His eyes were so sad. They gave him two weeks to mourn the home he’d grown up in before they threw him into a mission full of strangers to save a world that his best friend had given his life for so long ago.” She pats Bucky’s cheek lightly and exhales a long breath. “I joined the mission when I was asked and tried to match him with the man from your stories, but all of his edges are frayed. Whoever he is now is just a shell of whoever he used to be.”

“No,” Bucky shakes his head, tries to argue with her. 

Steve was too stubborn to stay down; always had been. Whatever came his way he’d always taken with full force, refusing to back down even in death. 

Natalia quiets him with a raised eyebrow and continues. 

“After everything we’ve seen, we all have frayed edges; red ledgers and too many ghosts to count.” She rises to her feet, pulls Bucky with her. “We’re all a little different than anyone remembers, but that doesn’t mean that everything has changed.” 

“I saw Sokovia on the television,” Bucky tells her, “he’s still too eager to fight- you both are.” 

Her responding smile is wicked, dancing in her eyes as she pulls her hair up into a tail. 

He’ll have to ask her how she does that. 

“I am sure another voice of reason will do wonders for us all,” she boasts. 

Bucky rolls his eyes, standing to pull her against his side and kiss her hair. 

“It won’t,” he knows, “but I’ve always had a soft spot for impassioned little punks.” 

They leave Natalia’s apartment and walk through a city that echoes in Bucky’s brain. For distraction, she loops her arm through his and asks him what he knows of technology. He admits to her that his months of solitude were spent tinkering, observing; taking notes in the books he carries in his backpack. She asks him many questions to which he parrots answers; seeming impressed when he’s able to pull a cell phone from his back pocket and generate a string of little cartoon faces, his favorite feature. She plugs in her own cell phone number and he types some for her while they wait at a crosswalk. It is a suggestive message with a vegetable and a shocked face. Her phone dings somewhere on her person and she chuckles. 

Bucky hasn’t been paying attention, too distracted by the vision of Natalia that he’d always prayed for: strong, healthy, _free._

He should have known that his clever girl from the Red Room would have a trick up her sleeve. 

Before he knows it, they’re standing outside of a door in an apartment building that is certainly not Stark Tower. Natasha knocks. Soft music filters through the door and somewhere in the recesses of Bucky’s memory he thinks he can make out the tune, if he could just place it - 

“Oh!” 

It’s a soft sound, barely a whisper as the door opens and light spills into the hall from the apartment. Just as quickly, it's interrupted by a set of broad shoulders, stretching the cotton t-shirt tight across them. 

A large hand rakes through that blond hair and then Bucky’s knees seem pathetically unable to support him. He casts his eyes to the floor, suddenly unwilling, unworthy. 

_“Buck,”_ Steve breathes his name and Bucky wants to fall to his knees, to spend the rest of his life praying for him; for that voice he’s been dreaming of for decades. 

He remains upright, miraculously, and Natalia nudges him inside. 

Steve moves aside to allow them into the apartment, but Natalia does not follow. She waits until Bucky has crossed the threshold before closing the door behind him, remaining in the hallway. Bucky thinks he can hear her steps retreating down the hall, but his heart is pounding too loudly in his ears to be sure. 

He casts his eyes about the small space, one that is clearly and intimately a reflection of Steve, suddenly feeling tears spring to his eyes and all at once he drags air into his lungs,reaching for the nearby counter to steady himself. To his left is the kitchen, dishes piled thoughtlessly in the sink, a bowl of fruit beside the stove; a percolator waiting on the stovetop. 

Bucky has a strange feeling that if he were to open the dishwasher he would find canned goods stored there, reminiscent of the D-rations from all those decades ago. He knows they both remember them without any kind of fondness. 

In the living room sits a large couch, a television is mounted on the wall but the screen is black. In the corner, with the most sight lines of the room, sits a reclining chair stationed beside a record player that could have been theirs back in 1940s Brooklyn. A stack of books overflows from a small bookshelf next to it. There’s a hallway beside the nest, but Bucky can’t see too far down it. Bedroom and toilet, he surmises. 

“You know, these past months I’ve been practicing what I could say to you when I finally got to see you again.” Steve’s voice guides Bucky back out of his thoughts. 

“I’ll bet it was all crap,” Bucky tries to sound suave, but the words get strangled in his throat and his voice cracks. He hears the vulnerability there and knows Steve can hear it, too. 

Suddenly the space between them is almost threatening, larger than the ocean Steve had crossed to join him on the front lines, larger still than that literal fiery chasm he’d vaulted across in Azzano; than the mountain pass he’d fallen down from the train, and the silence seemed longer than those seventy years separated. 

“You’re such a jerk,” and Steve is moving into Bucky’s space just as he’s forming the word “punk,” on his lips. 

But Steve must know that, because his big hands come to rest on either side of Bucky’s face and it’s like an electric current goes through his body from head to toe, his nerves live-wire sensitive and his stomach lurching as the Asset within purrs,

_Steve._

“You…” Is all that Bucky can manage. His legs are shaking and his hands feel clammy as he brings them up to cradle Steve’s face. Steve’s eyebrows are converged with emotions, the worry lines on his forehead are the same from the night when he’d admitted to Steve that his orders had come in. Bucky had spent all night trying to soothe those lines. 

Now, he brings the weapon - _his left hand,_ he reminds himself, up to settle his thumb over Steve’s forehead. His mind is swimming with decades of truths, lies, desperate admissions and Steve.

He can feel Steve’s breath on his face, now, even and grounding. But the silence doesn’t last long. 

“Nat said you’d come back when you were ready. You know I sent Sam out trying to find you for about a year?” 

“I know,” Bucky breathes. “A couple of times he almost found me,” 

“Jesus, Buck, why didn’t you just come home?”

“Steve.” Bucky wills his voice stern. Steve winces, squeezes his eyes shut but doesn’t pull away. “It wasn’t that simple… I-I had to re-learn how to piss- how to not shit my pants for Christ’s sake.” He lets himself chuckle. “My stomach got huge and I eventually learned that it was because I hadn’t eaten anything in twelve days, apparently starvation makes you fat. I can’t tell you how many clothes I went through. I was a mess, Steve, they made me-” He swallows hard and Steve’s arms are winding around his waist. 

Then he’s being cradled against Steve’s chest and he just slumps against him. They’d jacked him full of that serum back in 1944 so he could punch Hitler in the face, but taking Bucky’s weight on a tough day was just as valued as the United States of America, right? 

“They made me into a weapon. I never did anything on my own. I can’t even remember how they did any of it. Tubes for food, I can tell you that much. I dunno, maybe they put diapers on me or something, but that’s not important.” Bucky shakes his head, nuzzling the front of Steve’s chest and relishing in the solid muscle that rippled beneath when he pulled Bucky closer. 

The Asset within purrs. 

_Steve._

“The point is… The point is I wouldn’t have been any use to you in the past year, I couldn’t just come home. Still, sometimes I wake up and I’m… I mean in the middle of the night… the bed’s...” He shakes his head. “If I couldn’t operate my body on my own, Steve, I’d just become a weapon again.”

Steve, for all his fast mouth and back alley swiftness, stays quiet. Bucky feels Steve nod before he sets his cheek against Bucky’s head and hums for a moment. 

“But you’re back now.” Steve mumbles against him. “It’s going to be alright. You’re here.”

“Steve.” Bucky’s arms tighten around that broad frame as dread gnaws and tears at his stomach. All at once, it’s 1942 and Bucky’s leaning over him - Steve, who is wracked with violent coughs, a split lip and a shiner that’ll last for days. 

 

_“But you’re here now,” Steve insisted. All Bucky could do was sit beside him, wringing his hands in desperation as his lunch threatened to make its way back up and out onto the scuffed floor of the apartment._

_“I gotta go, Stevie. If not it’s desertion and then what?”_

_“I should be going with you.” Steve’s voice spits malice and Bucky couldn’t help but roll his eyes. The Army’d take one glance at Steven Grant Rogers and laugh in his face. For all Bucky knew, they already had. Steve popping in and out on “errands” wasn’t lost on Bucky._

_The air around them swells with silence stretching for minutes. Bucky finally succumbs,_

_“It’s just basic, Steve. For all we know it’ll be over before I get back and it’ll just be like a vacation.”_

_They both knew it was a lie._

_“But you’re here now,” sweat had pooled on Steve’s forehead from his fever and his body shook as Bucky pulled back the blankets for him. “It’s going to be alright because you’re here.”_

_Bucky felt as though someone had punched him in the gut, left hand running over the lines on Steve’s clammy forehead._

_“I don’t know if I can stay.”_

 

That fevered rage had never left Steve - he’d lived with it through Bucky’s time in basic and used it to get himself involved with Erskine and Howard Stark and Peggy Carter; changed himself into a body that could truly hold all the displaced anger he’d stuffed inside of himself at five feet nothing. Steve Rogers had gone down with the Valkyrie, the same sweat on his brow as the night Bucky left for basic, all to wake in 2011 with it still burning there. Through aliens, Insight and Sokovia, that fever controlled him. It wasn’t war, not even injustice that fueled him. Just the same pigheaded, ever-present, righteous need to be _needed._

“This isn't 1934, Stevie. I can’t just slap a bandage on everything that’s happened. Just-” Bucky heaves a breath and grits his teeth: every imagined scenario ended with them here, Steve with squared shoulders and jaw jutting out, ready for a fight - and it always ended in a fight. 

But Bucky’s not the back alley kid who hauled Steve to his feet and finished his battles for him, _he can’t be that kid,_ not any more. 

He finds himself somehow positioned on the couch between one blink and the next. He can’t remember how he got there. The couch is soft, massive. Both of them could probably stretch out on it, nothing like the ratty old thing back in Brooklyn that couldn’t even fit Steve -

_Steve._

Steve’s kneeling in front of Bucky, his eyes wide and searching. 

“Please,” Steve’s voice cracks. He knows the next words out of Bucky’s mouth just as well as Bucky himself; aches to stop them.

_I don’t know if I can stay._ Bucky knows he’s got to say them, to draw that line in the sand or wind up plummeting off a train car into a chasm seventy years deep with regret. 

“Buck, I know all’a this is all kinds’a fucked up, but-” 

A dry chuckle rumbles through Bucky; a smirk finds it way onto his face. This is no Captain America, no, that’s Brooklyn, right there: still entrenched in Steve’s soul. Maybe there’ll be room for Bucky yet. 

“I know we can figure this out, Buck. Tony’s got people that can help you, he’s even been working on this memory thing, and-” 

“Star-spangled man with a plan,” Bucky murmurs, still holding back a chuckle. He sets his hands back on either side of Steve’s face. “Hey,” he brings their foreheads together, willing, somehow, for the thoughts trapped in his mind to make their way to Steve.

“B-” Steve’s words are cut short by the sob that rips from his throat unbidden. 

Tears fall fast down his face and he’s sniffling; unraveling from the self that he’s been trying to hold together for too many years. Bucky keeps his hands on Steve’s face and his forehead pressed against those worry lines on Steve’s brow, breathes through his nose and wills himself calm. This, the Asset knows, and perks up within him. Here, the only sniper scope is Bucky’s fingertips trained on Steve, his entire being focused and practiced. His thumbs brush away some of the dampness. 

There’s a shot here that he knows he needs to take, but he’s got to line it up: string the words together with as much skill and ease that it takes to wait out a lineup, pull the trigger with gentleness, though, and maybe save two lives instead of taking one. 

“I’ll stay,” Bucky starts, but his tone is firm and his eyes mean business. “But pal-”

Steve sobs again and Jesus, didn’t anyone take this kid to a therapist? _He’s only twenty-eight, right? He and Bucky are still twenty-eight? Fucking christ,_

“Steve.” Bucky tries again. “We’ve both got work to do. I only want to say this once: Some things we can figure out together and some things we’ve got to do alone, okay? Listen, Steve, listen to me.” He shakes Steve a little. Steve hiccups - _Goddamn it_ \- and brings his eyes to Bucky. “Some days I’ll be here and some days I’ll be gone and I don’t need you sending search parties and waging wars. I just need you to understand. If I’m not with you then there’s still shit I’ve realized I’ve got to go figure out. But if I promise to leave notes and I promise to always return and somehow update you if plans change, will you follow me on this? I need you to follow me on this.” 

Steve does nothing but nod. Bucky had made that same promise to him years ago - years that turned in to decades, before he could make good on the promise again. 

_That scrappy little guy from Brooklyn who never knew when to back down from a fight, I’m following him._

“I’ll follow you,” Steve confirms finally, his voice barely a whisper, and that’s that. 

For now, Bucky’s throat is hoarse from too many words and all the effort of remaining in control. Perhaps tomorrow, or later, he’ll think of more to say. But for now, as Bucky reaches to haul Steve onto the couch, he lets himself hope that this will be the first of many times his arms will reach out to find him again. 

Settling into the couch together is a chore: there’s knees, elbows and spare throw pillows in too many places all at once. Finally, Bucky finds himself flat, Steve sandwiched between the back of the couch and Bucky’s body, his cheek on Bucky’s chest andTV remote in hand. Bucky winds his metal arm around Steve’s back to settle between him and the couch. Wedged between Steve and the pillows, the whirring of his arm is stifled and, finally, he doesn’t have to hear it. 

its been dangerously long without any sort of upkeep and Bucky would be lying if he said he didn’t have dreams where a malfunction causes him to be strangled to death. Sometimes he wakes up relieved, and sometimes he frightens himself waking up disappointed. 

Now, Steve shifts against him and settles his weight. To Bucky, it is both 1945 and 2011 - they’ve done this before hundreds of times - taken shelter in an area that’s both safe and unfamiliar, wrapped around one another as though the act could anchor them to their current reality. 

“Steve?” 

“Hmm?”

How many times had Bucky murmured that name aloud in the darkness of confines he could never understand? How many times had he prayed for some kind of response?

In the beginning, he’d spat the name from his lips heavy with blood and sweat until they’d beaten it out of him, tore Steve away; then Bucky himself, to build the Asset.

 

_“Steve will come for me.”_

_Selfish words from a desperate man, one who knew all too well that Steve’s first duty would always be to America, not some hopeless soldier from Brooklyn who owed any success to a sniper’s scope and the ability to stay hushed._

_It was Bucky caught in the fever dream that time, heart pounding away at his chest, aches coursing through his entire body, all the way up to what remained of his left arm. He wouldn't look - couldn’t look. The mangled, fiery mess never failed to make him pitch forward against his restraints and dry heave._

_The scientist, the same one he’d escaped earlier that year, turned to him with a wicked grin on his face, dim lights gleaming off his ridiculous glasses._

_Yeah, Bucky thought, this guy can eat shit._

_“Your captain cannot come for you, Sergeant Barnes, he thinks you dead.”_

_Something whirs to life by Bucky’s forehead - a drill - he’d heard plenty of them hanging around howard’s mechanic tents while Steve was stuck in debriefings._

_“Let’s hope…” Schmidt murmurs, stepping close as someone Bucky can’t see slips a mask over his face and his eyes begin to feel heavy._

_No, no, no not again… gotta hold the line… gotta protect the line… Steve… Stevie..._

_“Let’s hope that your Captain is wrong.”_

_The news footage is the first thing that they show Bucky when he wakes up, after he kills two technicians with the weapon they’ve strapped to his body. It’s heavy and his nerves burn with any movement. Something smells like infection. But if he can just make it long enough for Steve to -_

_“Your Captain thought you died. I suppose he gathered he had nothing left to lose.”_

_The headline is splashed over newspapers the agents held for him to read - where Hydra got their hands on it, Bucky had no clue. But there it is, before him in bold print and on the television screen._

__**CAPTAIN AMERICA MAKES THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE**  
CAPTAIN AMERICA DEAD IN CRASH THAT SAVED THE WORLD  
CAPTAIN AMERICA ENDS THE WAR WITH FINAL ACT OF PATRIOTISM  
REMEMBERING CAPTAIN AMERICA

_“No,” Bucky croaked out. His knees are weak and his vision blurs. Hands attack him and shove him into some kind of chair; strap him down before he can think to fight back because that grainy voice of the newscaster on the reel someone must have stolen is burning its way into Bucky’s brain._

_“The world remembers Captain America today as citizens all over the United States take to the streets and celebrate the end of a war which claimed so many. Unfortunately, for those here in Brooklyn, their beloved Captain won’t be coming home, after giving his life for his country, he will never to receive the same warm welcome his fellow soldiers will.. The Captain’s funeral will be held at St. Anthony’s Cathedral tomorrow, and the Captain, receiving posthumous honors aplenty, will be given a grave marker to be hosted in the National Cemetery. The men of the Howling Commandos - “_

_Someone cuts out the reel and the screen fades. Bucky slumped in the chair, beaten, hopeless._

_“Such a waste,” Schmidt clucks. That shit-eating, dangerous grin is back on his face. “But fear not, we will improve their weapon. To create the fist of Hydra, we must first remove the man.”_

_Something slots over Bucky’s face and he’s instantly on high alert: he’s been through this before; come out the other side at Azzano blubbering his name, rank and serial number like they’d drilled into him all those years back at basic._

_No, no, no._

_Someone shoves a cloth in his mouth; he almost bits their fingers off-_

_Steve -_

_As the white hot pain pulses through his skull, he screams. For Steve, for himself. Both are lost, now. He prays with what remains of his faith in God that he’ll die here in this chair, or the infection festering beneath the sickening plates of his- metal, fucking metal - arm will be the final nail in his coffin._

_Steve’s reached the end of the line and Bucky would hate to keep him waiting._

 

“Buck?” 

Bucky shakes his head and comes back to himself slowly, the real world colliding with him with such elation that he feels suddenly dizzy. Steve is curled up against him on this land yacht of a couch - alive, healthy, and free. Those blue eyes earth him for recognition and that blond hair makes Bucky’s heart ache. 

“Steve…” He breathes that name and knows by the way those lines appear back in Steve’s forehead that it’s the same way he’d whispered it in Azzano.

“Where’d you go, Buck?” Steve’s eyes are unwavering.

“Just… just remembered some stuff. Shit stuff.” Bucky struggles to clear his throat and tries to will his body to calm down. “Tell me a happy memory, Steve.” 

“Hmm,” that gets Steve’s eyes away from his face, then, as Steve considers. Finally, after minutes,

“My favorite one’s gotta be the time we stole those plums from Mr. Wright’s grocers when we were sixteen.” Steve doesn’t pause or wait for affirmation, just continues through the memory in that tenor voice. 

Bucky closes his eyes and listens, suddenly running through the streets of Brooklyn ahead of Steve, nudging folks to clear the way for Captain Asthma and his guilty conscience. 

“I don’t even know if he’d caught us lifting them from the crates out back but we were so giddy we just sprinted the whole way back to the apartment. By the time we made it up and locked the door we had to wait a whole three minutes until I could breathe again, but man, I remember those plums. They were so good. And our fingers were so fucking sticky cause we didn’t really know how to eat a damned plum and the juice kept running down our chins and staining our shirts and we finished those plums in just a couple of minutes, but Buck…” 

Bucky remembers clear as day his actions, after that: 

Bringing his forefinger to tilt Steve’s chin up and lowering his mouth until it met steve’s. Soft lips had overtaken his in an instant, and Bucky let Steve take whatever he’d wanted. 

He remembers lifting the stained shirt over Steve’s head and splaying his fingers out across bony ribs, feeling the breath there, the asthmatic rattle vibrating beneath his fingertips. The breeze from the window followed them down onto the couch where Bucky surrendered to Steve, palms sticky with plum juice while memorizing every inch of his soft, pale skin. 

Steve’s skin is healthy now, and as strong as the rest of him; there’s no crackling or wheezing as Bucky tucks his hand beneath Steve’s shirt, running his fingertips over a set of ribs that have broken and healed too many times. Steve tilts his chin up, searching Bucky’s face. Bucky can’t afford to second guess it. 

“I remember.” He assures Steve. 

Steve’s answering smile is broad and shining and - a thought that sends a swelling fire through Bucky’s chest - all for him. Almost a century later, he’s bringing his lips to Steve’s in the dark living room and he all he can remember is the nickel he’d left sitting on top of the crate filled with plums behind Wright’s grocery. 

He should tell Steve. He should pull away to see the look on his face when he admits that in his sixteen-year-old mind, they’d paid for those plums fair and square, but without the excitement and the rush of pinching them, they may have never wound up here, wound so tightly together in a time they could never fully understand, kissing, kissing on a couch so big it could have fit their whole block from back in the 40s. 

Bucky doesn’t get the chance to confess about the nickel - his brain shorts out and he’s overrun by the sensation of Steve’s arms bracketed on either side of his head, that super soldier weight he never got used to back in the war pressing him into the soft couch.

In the war, they’d rarely put a gun in Steve’s hands and Bucky had been so fucking grateful for that. Even before Hydra, Bucky’s status as an assassin had been set in his soul the moment they pulled him for special ops sniper training. It was something that he’d chosen to love. But Steve, brash, quick and always too eager but so, so apt to see humanity in everything, would have sooner died himself than make some of the shots Bucky had taken.

Still, though, knowing that never stopped Bucky from making light of it; teasing Steve during those rare occasions with lockable doors and no interruptions, 

_“Always quick on the trigger, Sugar, you’ve got to aim for your target, you know? Feel it out, wait it out. Get the right moment- right there, yeah.”_

When Bucky had first written to Steve from basic, they’d thought they were clever; initials led to addressing letters so no one would bat an eye: Steven Grant Rogers - SGR - became Sugar. Bucky Barnes - BB - signed his letters _Love, your Baby._

When Bucky returned from basic and again when Steve found him across the ocean, the names had stayed, whispered in heavy moments full of promise, hope and desire. 

“Sugar…” Clumsy and creaky from misuse, the word fell from Bucky’s tongue into Steve’s mouth, and he smiled against those teeth as he quickly realized not much had changed about Steve’s finesse. Steve’s broad, warm hands roamed up towards Bucky’s chest, fingertips running down the ridge of scarring puckered against the weap - _his arm_ \- were next, pressing against the fabric of his shirt to rest where flesh joined metal in an angry union. 

“Baby,” 

Bucky knew that tone; back in the war he’d lost $3 during a sharpshoot practice bet with the Howlies when Steve had snuck up behind him and his steady scope, leaning in to whisper _“come on, baby.”_

Bucky’s toes curl within his socks - when had he toed off his boots? - and he should, _God, he should just let Steve keep going._ But a stab of guilt chills his entire body as Steve eases himself against Bucky, 

“Steve,” Bucky chokes out. He’s pushed Steve away and sat up, but all at once too he’s far away again. He wanted, _needed,_ Steve flush against him. 

But he couldn’t give Steve what Steve needed. 

Guilt bubbled up and rose acrid in his gut. He raked a hand through his hair, snagging it on a knot near the ends. With a rough tug, a couple of the stands came loose.

Steve’s hands were suddenly in Bucky’s hair, shooing his own away. 

“It’s all right, Bucky. Just… just take a second.”

Bucky filled his lungs, hoped that when the air tumbled out of his mouth, that words would follow. It took a few tries.

“Steve, I… I don’t, I mean. I- I do, I do. That’s the whole problem, Jesus I do. I want, but…” A few more deep breaths, “It’s just… I haven't quite figured out…. _that part_ again… I can’t… well… I _can’t._ ”

Come on, pal. Bucky searches Steve’s face, his own cheeks burning from embarrassment and shame. Steve has to understand. If Bucky’s gotta spell out the issue with his dick to Steve… well, he'd sooner jump out the damned window.

“O-Oh!” Steve finally seems to catch on, red rising up his neck onto his face. “Oh jeez, Buck, I’m sorry!” Steve’s hands suddenly fly up to cover his face, “I didn’t even think about that, oh.” 

Bucky shifts awkwardly. 

Steve looks like he has a million things to say, a million plans to launch into action, but heeding Bucky’s earlier words, he settles on,

“Listen, I’m following you, Buck. We’ll take things at your pace and get where we get when we get there.” Luckily, that doesn’t dissuade him from taking Bucky’s face in his hands and kissing him slow and sweet. The Asset purrs and the sound makes it out of Bucky’s mouth. 

“I’m going to take a shower, then you can too, if you want. You can take the bed or the couch, whichever. I’ll take the opposite. We can switch off until you’re comfortable.” 

It’s a lot of words strung together in what sounds like a briefing, and Bucky gives a comical, lazy salute that earns him that baritone chuckle he loves so much. A touch of foreheads and Steve eases himself off the couch to pad down the hall. 

“This couch is massive,” Bucky calls after him.

“So are we, Buck.”


	5. This is Gospel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Was a dinky piece of paper really the only thing stopping him from marrying Steve? 
> 
> “Buck, you hate milk and sugar in your coffee.” 
> 
> Oh, yes. That, and the fact that Steve is a raging, stubborn imbecile who clings to the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flawless tear-jerking art made by the amazing, ever-patient WitchyLurker for whom I have heart eyes for days!!!!

_“Buck, you hate milk and sugar in your coffee.”_

 

Everything about the morning had been picturesque up until that point: Bucky had woken up on Steve’s - Steve’s - modern day 21st century couch, dressed in Steve’s modern-day sweats and taken a piss in Steve’s modern day bathroom while Steve cooked a modern day breakfast. 

Bucky wasn’t certain that the things he’d eaten would stay in his stomach long enough to actually digest - some foods were still risky business. 

Regardless, he was content to move about the space in silence with Steve, his hands wandering to twine their fingers together or brush against Steve’s hips every now and then with careful glances towards the windows in case someone saw them. But, of course, there was hardly a need for that now, Bucky had learned that as he’d searched the internet mindlessly long into the night: sleep was something that he needed much less of in order to function optimally. (He no longer needed eight full hours of sleep to function optimally: hadn’t for over seventy years.) 

Now, some people accepted men who were in love with other men - women, too. Now, some people understood, sought to teach others, to defend, to protect, to _fight_ for people like Bucky and Steve. Dangers still lurked for people like them, but not without a heart wrenching number of defenders and a legacy left behind by those who had fallen, streaked with colorful flags and paints that, in their boldness, both frightened and inspired Bucky. 

He made a mental note to try to find a shirt with those colors. Maybe Steve would want one, too, to offset his terrible khaki pants. Ugh. 

Stealing glances at Steve from behind his plate of pancakes, Bucky could feel the fork in his flesh hand bending out of shape as he recalled a particular newsreel he’d watched the night before. Handsome men in a large church, suits tailored impeccably with tears in their eyes as friends and family witnessed them being married. 

_Married._

_To Steve._

Bucky reached out for the mug of coffee set in front of him and sloshed some milk from his glass into it, watching the liquids swirl around. The only thing stopping him from marrying Steve was that their birth certificates were probably in the Smithsonian or something. Bucky reached for the bowl of sugar set decoratively in the center of the little island table. He had to chip away with his spoon in order to free enough granules to sweeten his coffee to just the way he preferred it, he discovered, while piecing himself back together in Romania. 

_Was a dinky piece of paper really the only thing stopping him from marrying Steve?_

 

“Buck, you hate milk and sugar in your coffee.” 

Oh, yes. That, and the fact that Steve is a raging, stubborn imbecile who clings to the past. 

What the fuck was wrong with his coffee, huh? Really, it was the first thing he’d managed to stomach for longer than five minutes when he’d been out on his own the first few weeks. The woman who’d made it for him reminded him of someone he wasn’t sure he knew - a few days later it came to him, the image of Peggy dancing in his mind as he’d ordered his coffee. Light and sweet, the simple act of carrying around the little paper cup had made him feel more human: Look, I’m just like any of you, he and the Asset would think to people passing by. No one would ever think he wasn’t just like them. Coffee was the first step back to Steve. 

_Steve._

Bucky’s chair scrapes against the linoleum and he’s out the door before his coffee can hit the floor. He hears Steve’s startled gasp as the mug shatters and he’s rounding the stairs. 

He’d shoved his feet into his boots near the door, but he’s too far gone to bend down to tie them up. Luckily, the modern day sweats Steve had lent him pass as everyday clothing in this century; that he knows by having wandered the streets of innumerable countries.

So, he shoves his hands deep into his pockets and keeps going, thumbing at the concealed knife in his pocket; considering the one stashed in his sock. He realizes, only as a stranger shoves their way past, that he’d slung his backpack over his shoulder before leaving Steve’s apartment. 

_Thanks, Asset._

The force of being hit by the stumbling stranger makes Bucky pull in a breath through clenched teeth. Amidst the clamor of the streets, no one can hear the sounds Hydra’s weapon - _my arm,_ Bucky forces himself to recall, _it’s my arm._

Sandwiched between Steve’s super soldier body and the super soldier worthy couch last night, Bucky hadn’t missed how stressed the whirrs of the plates and gears were with its unmistakable clunks every other minute. 

Even now, if Bucky extended his arm out to full length, the cogs and joints he knew were tucked beneath the plates would threaten to tear. So he keeps his elbow bent and makes sure his sleeve is tucked into his pocket as well. He’ll need a technician, and he knows just where to find a man qualified enough. Just… not quite yet. 

Bucky finds himself back in the same pew of yesterday’s church. 

_Was it really only yesterday?_

 

It’s a sunny day, and the light streaming through the church’s stained glass windows lights up the sanctuary with a certain peace that James Buchanan Barnes has not felt for decades. The wooden cross hanging behind the modest little podium at the front of the church is a deep cherry; there is no statue of a writhing, pained Jesus Christ and for that, Bucky is grateful. He’s seen that look on too many faces in his life to ignore it ever again, even if it would be on a statue. Bucky thumbs at a prayer booked tucked into the little shelf of the back of the pew in front of him. 

Sometimes they’d receive prayer books with their rations in the war. Little piddly things that women back home in the states had made, selecting prayers they thought might guide soldiers on their journey. Bucky had always kept his, squirreled them away in pockets or in his pack. He always had at least two on his person and the others he’d give away to any poor American sod they happened to take on during the raids.

Bucky traces his fingers over one now, that he’s found by skimming through at a glacial pace, trying to decipher the words. 

They’re all jumbled, now, too many all crammed onto a single piece of paper. But all he needs in order to remember are the first few words.

 

_“Have compassion, O most merciful Lord, on all who are lonely and desolate. Be thou their Comforter and Friend; give them such earthly solace as thou seest to be best for them; and bring them to the fuller knowledge of thy love; for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord,”_

“Amen,”

Bucky looks up; it’s the young girl from last night: shaved head, watchful eyes and dark skin. A shield of red and blue emblazoned with a star stands out against the white of her t-shirt. Bucky manages a chuckle. 

Thanks for the sign, he thinks wryly, eyes cast to the wooden cross before him. The girl regards Bucky for a moment before sinking her teeth into an apple clutched in her hand. The sound pierces the quiet and echoes through the sanctuary. 

“Ms. Edna asked me to come fetch you,” she tells him, already turning away to head out of the sanctuary towards the basement where they had slept the previous night, “it’s Thursday so she’s making chili and wants your help.”

 _Handler,_ the Asset purrs within him. 

Obedient and _compliant,_ he stands. As he follows her down the hall, Bucky notices large red letters on the back of her shirt 

#TEAMCAP

_Steve._

Quietly, he reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out his cell phone - he knows Steve’s number will be programmed in because Natalia’s no idiot and she would have programmed it in yesterday when they’d seen one another. Sure enough, his initials stand out there on the list: Natalia, SGR, Stark. Damn, she’s good. 

Bucky hurriedly taps, straining with only his right hand; his left still tucked into his front pocket. He’d forgotten his glove back on Steve’s counter in favor of cupping his mug - now shattered in Steve’s kitchen floor - of coffee in both hands to savor it. 

**SGR**

**Will return within 48 hours. Need space. This is not 1945. It is better and worse at the same time.**

**B.B.**

There is so much more Bucky wishes he could poke into the little screen in his palm:

_I still love you, SGR._  
Buy more plants for your apartment if you’re going to stay cooped up in there all day.  
Do you like chili?  
I’ve loved you through all this shit.  
I said we both have to figure ourselves out, and I meant it, but we can do this together, too.  
I’m at church and I know you’d like it here.  
Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.  
I’m with you ‘til the end of the line. 

Bucky pockets the phone as he rounds a corner into a bright kitchen shaking off the melancholy.  
A massive pot sits on the stove, beside a frying pan just about as wide as Bucky’s torso. The small woman, Ms. Edna, is tending to some browning meat in the pan. 

“Oh good,” She claps her hands together in delight. “Young man, you can brown the turkey. OC, you get to opening those cans for me, dear?” 

Frail fingers push Bucky towards the stove and shove a wooden spoon into his hand. He begins to slowly push the meat around and Ms. Edna clucks in delight. 

Bucky spends the day with OC, full name: Ophelia Chastity Jones.

“Yeah, my grandpa was really into literature. Lucky son of a bitch named all his grandkids like that. My brother’s name is Mercutio, can you believe it? That junkie from Romeo and Juliet? Christ,” 

And he spends the day with Ms. Edna, who calls him James even though he knows she’d never asked his name: The first time it happens Bucky knows that he’s been made. But, unaware civilian she is, Ms. Edna carries on and sets her hand on his left arm, hidden expertly, until now, beneath his shirtsleeve. 

The Asset rears up and everything starts to go wrong. 

The knife is in the Asset’s hand before its registered the movement and knows that its face must be twisted into a gruesome expression from the pain of being touched, the stimulus searing violently through the cogs and wires of the malfunctioning weaponized arm.

Hydra had been clever; sending the old woman. Very unassuming. The soldier had slept in their basement and let his guard down, now they would drag the Asset back to the chair to burn away the soldier’s memories again, to burn away Steve.

_Steve._

Clever, the old woman may be, but still frail. 

The Asset sets its jaw, hoping that the strain of teeth gnashing together could somehow compete with the pain burning through the permanent weapon. 

_Thirteen months without maintenance._

The Asset knows Hydra must have this old woman’s family, like so many of the others that have been in front of their prized weapon, their Fist, before. The Asset will make it quick, painless. That, somehow, it knows it has perfected; something of mercy from the soldier within that Hydra had been unable to reach. The Asset knows: the best weapons are the most efficient. 

The Asset flips the knife in its hand, testing the weight before realizing that it’s just a dull kitchen knife. Too dull. It quickly reaches down for the knife stowed in its sock. 

That brief pause is enough, though, because suddenly- 

_“Soldat.”_

The handler stands between the Asset and the old woman, whose eyes are wide as saucers, but the handler’s jaw is relaxed, still stirring the pot on the stove. This handler is slighter than the past ones, her demeanor is soothing: non lethal. On her shirt there’s that shield, 

Steve.

_Steve._

“Soldat, stand down.” the handler’s voice is firm, unwavering, and she’s raised a hand. The Asset thinks, for a moment, that she means to strike him. But she merely holds it there, palm out, fingers to the ceiling. A wordless command: _stay, wait. Comply._

_Comply._

The Asset steps back, hands falling to its sides as the Handler sets about debriefing the old woman, though not in the standard protocol. 

The Asset thinks it knows standard procedure, noting the lack of superior ranking officers here to remind this Handler. It suspects, that, perhaps this is a test for the Asset. Is this test designed to remind the Handler of proper debriefing and interrogation tactics? 

The idea seems ridiculous. This Handler didn’t strike, however, and has kept her hands off of the Asset thus far, even when she ordered the Asset to stand down. Because of this, the Asset is grateful and doesn’t move to correct her methods.

“Edna, it’s all right.” The Handler soothes the woman. 

The old woman is patting her hand against her chest rapidly and her eyes are still wide, but there is no other sign of acute distress. 

Then there’s a knife in the old woman’s hand, trained on the Handler. 

Something possessive within the Asset spikes, but it merely observes, passive. It has not been ordered to do otherwise.

“You’re one of them,” The old woman spits. 

She’s backing away from the Handler. “You’re with them and you’re going to take James back to those… those monsters. You’ll destroy him just like they did to my poor Alexei.” 

“No, Edna, no, I-” The Handler’s voice is sharp, afraid. 

She puts her hands up in surrender and swallows hard. Her eyes flicker to where the Asset remains inactive and aware. She does not order the Asset to intervene. 

The Asset can feel its pulse quickening; hear the groaning and buzzing of the weaponized arm as it tightens its grip on the knife. The old woman does the same, thrusting the knife out in front of herself to ward off the Handler, who has already so obviously surrendered. 

Something within the Asset flutters and the slightest chuckle escapes its facade as the soldier attempts to recall something from decades past: 

 

_Blond hair mussed and dirty in a back alley, the last in a long list of side streets Bucky had been searching. Sounds register and he starts to run, following the grunts, yelps and huffs of breath that no one could ever mistake for anything other than scrappy Steve Rogers getting his ass kicked again._

_Bucky rounds the corner of the alley and can’t help but bark out a laugh: there’s Steve, alright, chest heaving and breath wheezing, shirt untucked and hair wild. He’s trying to fend off that bulking Aodhan Murphy with a fucking butterknife, held out at arm's length in front of him._

_“For shit’s sake, Steve,” Bucky all but chuckles. A couple of well-placed hits and Aodhan is down, Bucky slinging bruised knuckles over Steve’s shaking frame. He laughs the entire walk home, his arm slung over Steve’s shoulders, supporting his weight and keeping him tucked close._

 

The Handler and old woman pay the Asset no mind as the Handler barrels on, her speech rapid, panicked. 

“Edna, they recruited me and gave me some training years ago, but I saw what it was and I left. That’s why I’m here. You’ve gotta believe me, all the stories my grandpa always told us kids- serving with Captain America and Sergeant Barnes - I pieced it together and ran away.”

“You ran from Hydra,” The old woman breathes. The Asset feels its skin crawl at such casual mention. “You’re homeless on the streets of Brooklyn because you didn’t want to join them…” her pace is slow as she lowers the knife, but then she hefts it right back up again, her gaze hardening. “But you just controlled James,” she insists, waving the knife in the Asset’s direction. 

The Asset has the sudden urge to cast out its arm and whisk the pitiful weapon away from her. It’s pathetic, really. She’d been using it to chop tomatoes. 

“That’s what they recruited me for,” The Handler explains slowly. “They wanted me to learn everything and be a part of their Winter Soldier project. I studied Russian in high school and college, did a few years abroad. They needed someone to speak the language. But once I saw the file and I knew that it was Barnes they were using- shit, Edna, Grandpa would’ve killed me himself. I panicked, I ran away, and I’ve been sleeping in your basement ever since. Are you happy?” 

The Asset watches obediently from where it stands, knife still ready in its fist, the old woman finally lowers the knife in her hands and turns back to the counter to resume chopping tomatoes. 

The _thunk thunk thunk_ of the knife on the cutting board is rhythmic and soothing to the Asset’s mind. Inside its heavy boots, it gently taps its toes along with the cadence of her slices. The Handler doesn’t move from where her feet are planted; thus the Asset remains still as well. 

“I could never be happy with something like that, dear one.” the old woman murmurs after a long moment. “The fact that Hydra just keeps claiming more and more lives...” She tops to shake her head. “Come help me finish this chili. Perhaps we can find a way to help James.” 

With that, the confrontation is suddenly and - to the Asset, inexplicably - resolved. The handler and old woman step around one another in peace to complete the meal they’d been making. 

The permanent weapon - the left arm, still whirrs unsettlingly as he tunes in to the soft clangs and clinking of the two women murmuring over the chili. A trickling warmth runs down his leg suddenly and somehow Bucky knows that the Asset has retreated, settled by the gentle command of the handler and the rhythm of the women cooking. But, when Bucky glances down, he groans and drops his knife to the floor when he realizes the Asset was _embarrassed._

He’s gone and pissed his pants in church. In front of the _women._

“There’s a change of pants in the bathroom cupboard, James.” Ms. Edna’s voice drifts up to him and she and OC are at the sink, now washing the dishes. The chili has been neatly packaged into paper cups, securely covered. 

Bucky shakes his head. He reeks and the piss in his pants is cold. How much time had he lost standing there between himself and the Asset? Still, he makes no move. 

OC looks over her shoulder and shoots him a glance, eyebrow raised just like Steve. 

_Steve._

Bucky manages to stumble into the bathroom and dig through the various discarded and donated clothing until he manages something akin to fitting. He scrubs at his thighs and calves with a soaped-up paper towel while cursing quietly. Tears spring to his eyes and he wipes them away furiously, angered by the hitch in his breath and the snot in his nose. He can hear the women murmuring the one another down the hall, but does not strain his ears to try and hear. Fuck, he’s just _so tired._

 _So much for progress._

The pots and pans have all been washed and put away; OC is leaning against the counter regarding Bucky steadily. She holds out one hand, palm up, while the other holds a plastic bag with two of the chili cups. 

“I can wash your pants,” She offers him. He glances around, wondering where the church could have stored a washing machine and a dryer, but wordlessly gives them to her. They’re Steve’s, those pants. Bucky wonders if Steve will notice they’re gone; ask him where tehy’ve gone. Nervous weat beads on his forehead but he takes the chili. His knife is there, then, pulled from somewhere on OC and flipped to him in offering, handle out. He sheaths in back in his boot. Swallows hard. 

Ms. Edna clucks and makes as though she’s going to step forward to put her hands on Bucky again, but she seems to think better of it, handing Bucky a little white card with one word emblazoned on the front: 

STARK.

Bucky should have guessed. He tucks his left hand into the pocket of the borrowed pants and turns on his heels.  
Then, a thought occurs to him and he slowly turns to OC. 

“Will you-” he doesn’t know how to ask her, _will you come with me so that I don’t hurt anyone else? Will you come with me so that Steve won’t have to put a bullet in my head just yet? Will you come to protect everyone from me?_

But OC seems to get the message, and, after pecking Ms. Edna’s cheek with a kiss, tosses the embarrassing soiled pants into another plastic bag, then into a paper bag, and strides up beside Bucky. 

Out on the street, he wills his legs to carry him where he knows he needs to be, his face a mix of pain from his arm and the anguish of the day’s events. OC offers no words, and for that, Bucky is grateful. 

 

_Welcome, Sargent Barnes. Ms. Jones, lovely to see you again._

Bucky startles in the lobby of Stark Tower, shifting, the Asset bubbling up in a frenzy at the voice with no body. 

He looks up, to the rafters: no one. He can see OC casting a practiced glance around, too. Her fingertips twitch as she slides an identification card back into her pocket and Bucky wonders how many knives are hidden on her person. 

_Please do not be alarmed, my name is Friday. I am Mr. Stark’s programmed intelligence. I have no body. I cannot harm you._

“Friday,” Bucky manages. He rolls his shoulders back and can’t help but glance around. Oc seems at ease, though her shoulders still hold stress. “Artificial… intelligence…” 

The building is pristine, shiny, and all things Stark. His mind begs to revisit the science fair that night he’d shipped out for Europe, to see Stark’s flying car again. He shakes off the feeling before it drags him under and holds out the cup of chili in his hand. 

“I’m looking for Howard,” He explains to the air. “I need…” He slowly pulls his left hand out from his pocket, turning his wrist over and cringing at the sounds he’s met with. A number of things pass through his brain, but he finally fishes out the word he needs, “a technician.”

“Mister Stark was hoping you would make your way to the tower soon, please, proceed to the elevator. He is in his shop currently.” 

Friday’s voice prompts, and Bucky obeys. The lurching of the elevator feels all to familiar as the floor seems gives way and he knows that the computer picks up on the pathetic sound that leaves him. OC’s leaning against the wall, seeming indifferent. 

_She’s been here before,_ Bucky realizes.

“Do you control the whole building?” Bucky asks Friday instead. He leans his head against the cool wall of the elevator.

“I control this building, Mister Stark’s Iron Man suit, and I am also programmed into each of the  
Avenger’s cellular devices, should they be in need of my assistance.” Friday provides. 

“Even Steve?” 

“Captain Rogers was reluctant to agree. He remarked with, to quote ‘for shit’s sake, Tony, I don’t want your damned baby monitor.’” 

Bucky feels himself chuckle, hearing the recording of Steve’s voice flood the elevator. Hears the guffaw that makes its way out of OC. 

“Nevertheless, I am programmed into Captain Rogers’ device though it remains off more often than not. Mister Stark has asked me to expand the same courtesy to you as well, Sargent Banes.”

“Me?” Bucky regards his hands doubtfully, metal and flesh, damaged and dirty against the backdrop of the modern luxury building. 

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes. Mister Stark has concluded that should he need to reach Captain Rogers on short notice, the most reliable way to do so will be through you, as mister Stark finds you to be, and I quote: at this moment, Stark’s voice filled the elevator. Another recording, Bucky surmises. “...probably the more responsible, reliable, and all-around level headed of the two, I mean Christ, that serum is probably the only he way he would have even made it out of the twentieth century. The guy was a scrapper and still is. Barnes’ll be good for him.” 

“I sure hope he’s right,” Bucky breathes.

“Mr. Stark is hardly ever wrong about such things.” Friday provides. 

The elevator stops with another lurch and Bucky sways on his feet as the doors open to reveal a garage. Brightly lit, though crowded and untidy, and a smile lights Bucky’s face. 

_Just like Howard’s mech tents_ he finds himself thinking. Though, Bucky’s favorite feature of the tents was never the technology hidden within. 

 

_“And then I just slip my arm in here,” Steve hefted the shield and wiggled his forearm between the two straps, “and that’s how I carry it.”_

_“Like a dame’s purse?” Bucky ignored the offended sound Howard made, off somewhere in the corner. “Look Steve, if you’re gonna wear this… huge… shield… in the middle of a war, you should at least have both your hands free! Can’t you have straps or something? You looped that tin can around, why can’t Howard do it for this one?”_

_“Howard can’t nothing.” He was beside them now, eyes bright at a challenge. “You want straps to hold onto, Bucky Boy, Cap here’s gonna get ‘em.” Howard winked at them and for a moment Bucky’s heart raced._

_Fucking shit, Howard knew._

_The mix of blush and terror splattered across Steve’s face, mirroring his own, but Howard raised no alarm and merely shooed them out of his tent sans shield, tugging the tent flaps closed: code for ‘Enter at your own risk.’_

_“Buck-” Steve tried, but Bucky wrenched at his arm and pulled him along, hissing under his breath._

_“Shut the fuck up, punk, and let me think a minute.”_

_They wound up back in Steve’s tent, which Bucky had all but moved into at this point._

_Well, dammit, the evidence was all there for anyone walking by:_

_There were two cots but they sat only a couple of inches apart; nothing a little push couldn’t close the gap on. The desk was littered with Steve’s papers, but alongside were Bucky’s cigarettes; Steve’s compass sat atop one of the little prayer books Bucky couldn’t seem to part with. Clothes that fit the both of them were folded meticulously and tucked into a single knapsack._

_If this wasn’t some kind of makeshift home, Bucky couldn’t figure out what else to call it._

_Fuck._

_“I’ll move my shit out,” Bucky murmured. But it was Steve’s turn to pull Bucky, this time flush against his body, heat radiating out through the fabric of his suit._

_“The fuck you will,” he spits. But then, his voice goes gentle. “I don’t think anyone’s going to say anything, Buck,” his eyes are searching Bucky’s. Creases appeared between his eyebrows and, before he could stop himself Bucky’s reached out reflexively to smooth them, leaving his hand on Steve’s cheek. “If they were they could have done it a long time ago.”_

_“You really think that.” Bucky searched Steve’s eyes. His answer was there: yes. “If you get branded as some kind of fairy, Steve, even this new body won't stop what some’a the thugs out there would do to ya.”_

_“Not our men.” Steve affirms._

_Bucky is certain of it too, but there’s only so much they would be able to do._

_“Baby…” Steve holds Bucky’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, shaking his face back and forth with a gentle movement._

_Bucky feels his insides turn to jelly and closes his eyes without even thinking. “Who the hell knows if we’re going to make it out of here alive. This,” Bucky knows from behind his eyelids that Steve is casting his own eyes around the strangely accurate replica of their Brooklyn apartment. “This is the last thing they want to concern themselves with.”_

_“Stevie, I-“ but Steve’s mouth is on his, then, and Bucky surrenders. He’s right, after all, His Star-Spangled Man with a Plan._

_“You seen Cap?” Howard’s voice carries, too artificial and loud, through the walls of the tent: a warning before he stomps closer and friggin knocks on one of the tent posts._

_Steve and Buck had jumped apart at the first syllables of Howard’s words._

_Howard doesn’t come in, though, not really. Only tosses a bundle of leather to Bucky with another damn wink through the opening._

_“Let me know how it holds up, huh sarge?” Is all he says before stomping away. “I’m not sure where to put the holsters for the shield stirrups, so you’ll have to let me know.”_

_“Oh!”Steve makes a soft noise as Bucky holds out the leather harness in his hands. its smooth leather, two loops presumably for Steve’s arms that meet in an X right over his spine. Bucky’s hands tighten on the material, and in that moment, he makes his decision._

_Hold the line._

_“What do you think, Sugar?” His tone is wicked._

 

Howard - no, it’s not Howard, not really - stands behind a workbench when Bucky comes to himself moments later, still standing in the elevator, wrapped paper cups of chili getting cold in his flesh hand. 

“Sergeant Barnes,” young Stark greets him, unmoving behind his bench. “Friday mentioned you’d entered the building, I can only guess it’s not for my good looks and rapier wit.” 

Bucky clears his throat, squares his shoulders and braves the step out of the elevator. 

“I’m looking for a technician,” the words are feeble from his mouth and he winces at their vulnerability. “I was hoping you’d have a recommendation.” 

“Well, the bio side of the Biomechanics Science Bros is doing some work back in Calcutta for a bit,” Tony scratches at his goatee, pretending to think, “but there’s no reason why we can’t make some maintenance adjustments and do some quick scans to see how it’s ticking.”

Young Stark, so similar and yet so different from the one Bucky had known, ushers him over to a chair. There are an array of tools set out already; Friday must have been able to tell Stark that Bucky had been on his way down. He casts his eyes to the ceiling. 

“Your AI is impressive,” he murmurs. 

OC hops up onto a vacant work table and grins as a couple of small robots zoom over to her with a mechanical squeal. She pats each one in turn. 

Within Bucky, the Asset wants to roll over and show its soft underbelly. 

Young Stark does some scans of Bucky’s arm, then his whole body. Nothing hurts more than usual as the beam of light travels over him. He locks eyes with OC anyway, and her fingers twitch in recognition, conveying over a wordless channel that he is okay in Stark’s lab. 

Stark makes various distress noises and hand-waving gestures for long moments. 

“Friday,” Stark’s jaw is tense. 

“I see it, Boss.” the disembodied voice soothes. 

“Damaged sensors, Barnes.” Stark clarifies. Another hand wave. “Nothing I can’t fix, but,” his eyes go dark. “How is your shoulder feeling?” 

“Like someone shoved some rocks into the socket,” Bucky reports easily. He rolls his shoulder experimentally, can feel whatever is out of place jarring and grinding together. Spots dot his vision.

Fuck. 

“Woah, woah, terminator!” Stark squeaks in distress, hands flapping. “Stop that!” 

Bucky pauses. Stark pinches his nose and huffs out a long breath. 

“We’ll have to sedate you if we’re doing anything about that arm tonight. The feeling in your shoulder is some kind of self-destruct mechanism, designed to - oh god, I can’t believe I’m saying this. Friday, let me have another look at the scan.”

Something blue flashes about the room but Bucky has a hard time training his eyes on it. His shoulder is searing, burning. He leans forward to dry heave as he recalls the smell of a soldering iron and singed flesh; infection and screams amidst a fever delirium he’d prayed would bring him to Steve.

_Steve,_

“Designed to separate the arm and body from the inside,” OC completes the sentence for Stark. Stark regards her for a long moment. Then, like a father scolding a child, he wags a finger in her direction.

“Not a word of this to Cap, you understand? Location and nothing else. I refuse to be put in the middle of mommy and daddy’s disagreements.”

Bucky wants to say something to Stark, tell him that Steve doesn’t need to know about any of this. It's easier to leave Steve at home and let him worry rather than drag him into all this shit, just like he’d done in the 40s, dragging him along to get caught up in the war. 

But his legs are shaking and he can feel the sweat beading on his brow, fighting to keep himself stable amidst the pain coursing through his body. It all happened so quickly, why did the weapon - 

“If we have any hope of saving your arm we’ve gotta sedate you, Barnes.” Stark’s voice floats over to him, the urgency clear. 

Bucky nods. OC is here. 

_Handler_ the Asset supplies, lolling around in Bucky’s subconscious like some kind of tame lapdog. The comparison pulls a smile onto his lips that Stark must have mistaken for ease, because in the next moment Bucky’s in a small, unrestrained chair with a clear, flimsy oxygen mask strapped to his face, nearly sliding off from the flimsy little strings looped around his ears. 

Howard sits beside the chair, extending and tucking his legs so that the wheels on his own chair seem to rock him closer, then farther, closer, farther, closer again. His eyebrows are knitted together in focus. Always so focused when it came to the weapons, Howard. Bucky chuckles. 

A gentle hand on his right shoulder has him leaning into OC’s arm like a cat. He feels her soft, warm skin against his stubbly cheek as he drifts off under the mask, head tipping forward. For a long time he can hear Stark’s muffled voice like it’s in another room while the even, soothing cadence of his AI chirps responses. Stark’s voice moves closer; Bucky can hear him setting tools down onto the workbench. 

He thinks he sees a third pair of shoes on the floor, right in front of his own: scuffed, black motorcycle-type boots, but before he can look up proper, he falls back asleep.

 

_He stared down at those gaudy red boots, just inches from his own: scuffed, filthy, worn in too quickly from trekking through the fucking trenches._

_Jones clears his throat to Bucky’s left, startling him a bit._

_“Sorry,” Jones dips his head in apology. “Right. Cap, Sarge… Here we go”_

_Gabe flips through the book in his hands until he comes to a good enough page and starts to read. Bucky’s not really listening, though, he’s busy looking at Steve._

_Steve._

_That big, clumsy body Erskine had shoved him into is breathing hard, practically vibrating with excitement. Bucky can’t even remember how they wound up out here in the middle of the woods with a semicircle of Howlies around them, all three sheets to the wind._

_Sober as a nun, though, Bucky feels the iron grip of Steve’s hands on his own. He’d egged it on, agreed and pressed up close to Steve until he gave in._

_Right, that’s how they’d wound up out here: James Barnes is as needy as a teenager._

_“Dearly beloved,” Gabe starts, but seems to rethink, “and drunken unit,” he adds._

_The men all giggle. Gabe shuts the book with an exaggerated motion and tosses his arms wide._

_“We’re out here in the fucking french countryside to send a big ol’ ‘Fuck You’ across the border to Hitler himself by marrying America’s Golden Boy to some poor jackass from Brooklyn!”_

_Even Bucky’s grinning now, and in the evening light Steve’s smile is like a marquee._

_“So-!” Gabe presses his fingertips together dramatically, eyes wide. “Sarge, you gonna look after Cap and get cozy every chance you get in this damned war or what?”_

_Bucky’s words are caught in his throat. There’s so much he wishes would tumble out._

_Even after the war, Steve. We’re gonna make it outta here and get back home to Brooklyn and we’ll figure it out. You’ve always been it for me, even when there wasn’t much of you at all. No- That’s not true. There’s always been so much of you, Steve. You’re all I’ve ever known and the only thing I’ve got any faith in anymore._

_The thought leaves a bitter taste in Bucky’s mouth, and all he can manage is a pitiful, inadequate “I will,”_

_But Steve’s hands tighten overtop his anyways. Gabe gives a knowing nod and turns his glossy, drunken eyes to Steve._

_“Cap, how about you? You gonna let your crazy self run after this sonofabitch until it sees you both safe from this hellhole?”_

_Bucky knew what was coming anyway, but he can still feel the slice of panic through his soul. There was always that ‘What if?’, but Steve is suddenly a step closer, their boots knocking together. Safe._

_Steve._

_“Til the end of the line,” Steve vows._

_“Well! Then, by the power vested in my sorry ass,” Gabe somehow fishes out a scrawny dust broom from behind a tree, “y’all best hope my gramma don’t come after us in our sleep after I let a couple’a white men jump this broom, but we haven't got any rings.” Gabe sets the broom on the ground, suddenly back to his somber, educated self, all playfulness forgotten._

_He regards Bucky with a look that makes him tighten his grip on Steve._

_Then they give a little hop and the Howlies cheer._

_“Suck some cock, Hitler!” Dum Dum roars up into the sky._

_Bucky takes Steve’s face in his hands and sets their foreheads together, smoothing out the worry lines that seem so permanent in recent weeks. But then, Steve’s eyes light up and before Bucky can do anything else, they’re kissing._

 

The motorcycle boots are propped up on the table beside Bucky’s lap when he wakes up, ankles sheathed by dark denim. Bucky’s eyes feel heavy, his tongue like cement in his mouth. He wills his eyes to follow the denim-clad legs, gaze trailing up to take in narrow hips and, underneath, the _swell of an ass even Hydra couldn’t keep him out of._

A giggle leaps from Bucky’s throat before he can even process it.

_Shit._

Steve shifts, stretching his arms above his head where he sits in a chair. His boots press into the skin of Bucky’s thighs through his pants but he’d be lying if he said he gave a damn about that while he watched Steve’ shirt ride up to expose the line of skin just above his jeans. 

Swallowing the words in his throat is suddenly a monumental task. He can’t meet Steve’s eyes. 

“You know where we are, Buck?” He hears that tenor voice ask him. It bounces off the glass walls and through the pristine workshop, settling between his shoulders like a weight long missed. 

“Howard’s workshop,” Bucky slurs. The dinky oxygen mask is sliding down his face, so he takes it off, “how’d we get back here from France? We were in the woods with the men, Gabe, he… we jumped the…”

He does meet Steve’s face, then, and something churns in his stomach like sour milk. Instantly, he sobers up, his mind scrabbling to find some purchase in the 21st century as reality slides over him like a blanket and threatens to suffocate him. 

“Howard said he could work on my arm, he-” Bucky’s voice dies in his throat as he looks to his left, mouth agape. 

The arm is silent as he rotates his wrist, curls and easily extends his fingers. He flexes his elbow and rolls his shoulder, greeted only by faint, even whirrs. 

_Paramount functionality!_ The Asset within beams. Not for the first time, Bucky finds himself agreeing. 

Bucky hears Steve ask Stark if he can take Bucky home. OC has already disappeared; Bucky notes, the sad demeanor of the Asset providing: it is disappointed with her absence. 

It’s not Stark who answers Steve, but the floating voice of the building. 

“Mr. Stark advises keeping a close eye on Sergeant Barnes and to phone at the first sign of distress or malfunction.” 

Steve helps Bucky to his feet, and Bucky thinks wryly that Stark wasn’t talking about only his arm when he mentioned malfunctions. 

Far off in a corner of the workshop, Bucky can see Stark bent over a table, muttering furiously as scans of Bucky’s body and arm litter the tabletop as well as occupy the space above, seemingly floating until Stark reaches a hand up and summons one down to eye-level.

“You okay, Bucky?” Steve’s voice centers him. He looks up from where his arm is slung across the expanse of Steve’s shoulders, his full weight handled with ease. He wishes he could think of a witty remark, something he could follow up with a swift punch and a tough ruffle of Steve’s hair; even that clap on the shoulder that they’d come to exchange during the war, their wordless code for everything the battlefield left unsaid. 

Instead, Bucky feels his face get hot as the only thing that escapes him is a desperate, crooning, “ _Steve-_ ” before his world goes black.


	6. Nicotine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve has jolted up as though Bucky’s stabbed him. 
> 
> In a cold panic, Bucky wonders if he _has_ stabbed Steve. But when he looks down his hands are free of blood stains and the soft, pale rug beneath Steve’s socked feet is clean.

Bucky wakes up on a couch. Steve’s couch. 

_Steve._

Bucky can tell by the way the light falls through the windows that it’s morning; can hear Steve shuffling about somewhere in the apartment. When he shifts to sit up, running a hand through his hair, he suddenly realizes how long it’s been since he’s had a shower. Yikes. He cautiously stretches his arms above his head, waiting for a pain that never comes from his metal arm. Then he’s grinning like a maniac, twisting his arm this way and that, hearing nothing but the softest whirrs and the occasional _click_ if he bends the joints in any non-human way. 

“Buck!” 

Steve is suddenly there, too close, and Bucky scrambles back to get away, pressing back into the couch. His heart pounds painfully in his chest and the Asset flurries just below the surface of his mind, seizing the air in his lungs. 

With mammoth effort, Bucky grounds himself by clenching the soft fabric of a blanket nearby, hauling air through his nose and back out again, sensing it in his diaphragm and listening to it: in, out, in out. Steve’s blanket, Steve’s couch, Steve’s apartment. Brooklyn. 2011. Steve. 

_Steve._

“You’re not gonna hurt me, Buck,” Steve whispers, makes to slide closer. Something pounds behind Bucky’s eyelids. 

_Yeah, sure, pal,_ he wishes he could grin. But he can’t. Not yet. Space, he wants to ask - for himself, for the Asset - _space, dammit Steve._

“Steve,” he manages through gritted teeth. The Asset is thrashing, gnawing at his consciousness. If he can just get Steve to _back up._

“Buck,” Steve’s voice is flooded with relief, and Bucky knows he’s fixing to touch him. There’s been a misunderstanding, and if Bucky can’t clear it up in the next 5 seconds, Steve’s fingers are going to wind up _broken._

“ _No,_ ” he manages to form the syllable. He forces breath in, then out again. “Back. Up.”

When Steve jolts up and off the couch Bucky can feels the air leave his lungs and the soft blanket is at his cheek because he’s toppled back down onto the couch, deflated. Tossing a hand over his face, he takes several more breaths. 

Thankfully, _suspiciously,_ Steve is silent.

When Bucky’s mind feels calm and expansive and primarily - though not entirely, he’ll be the first to admit - he cracks open an eye and looks up. 

But Steve is fucking crying again. 

Well, close enough to it: Bucky can see the tears welled up in those big blue eyes and the way that Steve’s jaw is set tight. 

His chest his heaving like Bucky’d just punched him and Bucky can read the fear on his squared shoulders as easily has he’d been able to back before the war. 

He throws his arm back over his eyes to shield them. He focuses on his breathing for a long, long moment until:

“I uh,” Steve coughs. Sniffles. Coughs again. “I cleared out the second bedroom. Just… well.” He huffs a sigh. “In case you want to use it… for… when you’re here.” 

A smile twitches at the edges of Bucky’s mouth from under his arm. The effort at making the gesture noncommittal is so sweet he thinks he can feel his teeth beginning to rot. He can practically feel the waves of hope radiating off of that big, dumb body.

“I’m not sure when I’ll be here.” he feels guilty reminding him. 

He feels Steve sag onto the couch by his feet, deflating instantly. 

Bucky knows without opening his eyes that Steve is wringing his hands together.

“Sam says…” 

And Bucky does open his eyes now, staring over at Steve. 

He’s pinching the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes shut, “Sam says that it could be beneficial for your recovery if you had a safe place to come and go; that it’s important for you to have a home base to recharge and feel safe.”

“Sam is a smart man,” Bucky offers. Then, softer, “Thanks, Steve.”

“Just… could you water the plants?” Steve’s request comes out hurried: the meat of the conversation, the things that Steve really needs to say, “Nat keeps bringing over plants whenever she visits and I forget to water them, so… when you come by if you water the plants then maybe she wouldn’t be so mad at me all the time. And, I don’t know, just- leave a note on the fridge or something... so I know you’ve been here, and that you’re okay.” 

“I told you I’d do that,” Bucky reminds him. “I sent you a text message when I left yesterday morning.” 

Christ, had it really been less than twenty-four hours? 

“Oh...” Steve gets up, then, and crosses the room to open a drawer in the kitchen. A cell phone emerges and Bucky can hear the sound of it powering on. “I don’t usually…” he trails off, staring down at the phone in his hand. Bucky’s sitting up, now, eyeballing him from where he remains on the couch. Simultaneously, he is both shocked and not the least bit surprised that Steve neglects to carry a phone with him. He can feel his eyes rolling as if on his own accord, dropping back onto the couch in a huff.

“Oh, I guess you did,” He hears Steve mutter. “Well… thanks.” 

Bucky rakes a hand over his face, fatigue settling over him like a ten-pound weight. 

The apartment is silent for a long time. Eventually, he hears Steve shuffle down the hall and hears the faint click of his bedroom door closing. Bucky flexes his metal fingers while rolling his wrist, exercising it - considering his options. 

His recovery, though it had been slow and roughly documented within the notebooks he stashed safe in his backpack, was far from finished. But, he liked to imagine the worst of it over: he could feed himself, get himself dressed, and most days went without any accidents of the digestive nature. 

Speaking of.

Bucky got to his feet slowly, testing his balance before padding to Steve’s bathroom to relieve himself. Per routine, he remained for a few extra moments to collect his thoughts and examine his surroundings; long enough to notice a plastic-wrapped toothbrush set out on the countertop: an offering. 

Brushing his teeth feels good, even if the new bristles are a little too coarse on his gums. But Bucky rinses, spits, and begins again. He’s just setting the toothbrush down when there’s a knock on the apartment door: Heavy, official.

_Handlers._ The Asset perks up within, setting Bucky’s jaw into a hard line, curving the shoulders forward. Wait, _listen-_

Bucky hears the soft click of the front door being opened; the sound of the hinges working and then another click as the door closes. He knows there is someone inside the apartment now - can smell it. He tightens his grip on the knife that had been, just moments ago, strapped to his ankle. 

_Thanks, Asset,_ as he soundlessly leaves the bathroom and pads down the short hall, back flush to the wall. 

The intruder is inspecting Bucky’s backpack, left foolishly on a chair at the little kitchen island. He’s tapping at a mobile phone in his hand while the other picks at the buckle of the backpack. 

Tall, broad with dark skin and a shaved head, Bucky knows the set of this man’s shoulders well. This is the man that had followed him; stalked him - almost found him as he’d been trying so hard to rebuild himself in peace. 

_Hydra._

Bucky moves to apprehend the target; doesn’t account for the sudden trilling of Steve’s phone, left out in the coffee table. Everything within him lurches upward like bile, and the man spots him as he turns to the noise. 

All at once, Bucky’s on top of the agent, flinging him to the ground and securing his shoulder with one hand while pressing the knife to his neck with the other. 

Bucky closes his eyes: Steve’s carpet is so clean and soft, he hates the thought of soiling it. Always hated that part. But then, 

“I’m not here to hurt you,” the man pants. He allows his body to go slack under Bucky’s hands, an odd survival instinct for a Hydra Agent. 

“You were following me,” Bucky growls out. He can feel the Asset bubbling to the surface and he takes a deep, deep breath without loosening his hold. Another. “ _Tracking me,_ ” he adds. 

“Look, man, I know.” the man agrees. Bucky twists his hold on the man’s shoulder just to hear him groan. The Asset is delighted. 

“Buck?”

Bucky looks down the hall as Steve’s door opens. The intruder tries to follow suit but Bucky hears him suck in a pained breath as the knife presses deeper into his neck, ready to break the skin.

“God, Buck what - _Sam?_ ” Steve’s voice is shocked, and the intruder huffs out what Bucky thinks might be the agonized variant of a chuckle. 

“Bucky this is Sam, he’s - he’s my friend, he’s not going to hurt us.” Steve looks like he’s about to set his hands on Bucky’s arm, so Bucky relinquishes his hold on the assailant in favor of saving Steve from the potential of winding up in the same position. Besides, two super soldiers could easily apprehend this one Hydra agent. The Asset buzzed about in Bucky’s mind, waiting.

“Where are the others?” Bucky grits out. _There are always others. Countless; searching for him._ His pulse is racing. He’s trying to take deep breaths. Get away from the sightlines, step back into the hallway. Conceal. 

“Man, I came alone.” Sam rubs his neck as Steve helps him up from the floor. Face-to-face, Sam is the most convincing agent yet: Soft eyes, poised not for hostility but to minimize threatening appearances. “Barnes.” Sam raises his hands, palms out. “I’m sorry I spooked you. Honest man. I’m alone. Unarmed.” 

“Buck, Sam is my friend.” Steve pipes up, moves closer. Bucky presses himself back against the wall, away from Steve and into the shadows. “He’s been trying to help me find you this past year.” 

“Yeah well it looks like you beat me to it,” Sam’s voice is light, jovial- _friendly._

“You were following me.” Bucky repeats tensely, still gripping the knife. He can hear the steady _shush, shush, shush_ of his heartbeat as it pulses in his ears. 

The Asset wriggles with anticipation. 

“I _was,_ man.” Sam hangs his head, averting his eyes from Bucky in favor of that nice, white, soft rug. “I’m sorry about that. I thought - I thought I was helping Steve out, to find you. We thought you were still active, you know? I didn’t think of how it’d make you feel. That’s on me, I’m sorry.”

Steve makes a strangled sound from beside Sam. Deep lines in his forehead indicate stress, worry. His shoulders slump in a manner that depicts - guilt?

“Sorry?” Bucky asks. He hesitantly takes a small step forward.

“Yeah,” Sam insists. “You were probably just trying to lay low and recover from what those assholes did, I mean…” He trails off. His eyes narrow and he regards Bucky with something that makes the Asset tear at his consciousness. He fends it off. Sam’s arm gravitates towards Steve: protect. 

“You were trying to recover, right Barnes?” He asks. 

In a great feat, Bucky flips the knife in his hand away and squats down to re-sheath it on his ankle, eyes locked on Sam. His heartbeat is still pounding and his fingers are shaking. Once upright, he repeats Sam’s gesture back: hands raised, palms out. 

This earns him the biggest grin he thinks he’s ever seen. 

“Right on.” Sam praises. 

Beside him, Steve instantly deflates, sagging shoulders hunched against Sam’s side and scrubbing his face with his hands.

“Sam, I’m so sorry.” He offers. Sam just shrugs, waving him off while his eyes are fixed on Bucky with a soft expression.

“Are you okay, man?” He asks. 

“Me?” Bucky can feel the shock on his face. He almost looks behind him to see if Sam is referring to someone else. Sam nods. “I uh…” 

_Acceptable functionality,_ the Asset wills him to provide. No way. Instead, he settles for,

“I’m okay.” 

Sam regards him for a long moment, folding his arms across his chest and quirking an eyebrow as if to assess him for threat levels. Bucky tries to fold in onto himself, to appear as non-lethal as possible. On some level, it must be successful because Sam decides to abandon his stance and head over to the couch, flopping himself down with little grace; wiggling until he's found the most comfortable position. Bucky remains standing, back against the wall, out of the sightlines of the windows. 

_Just in case,_ he tells himself. But he knows that it’s what little pull the Asset has retained keeping the shell safe. 

“So what brings you to Brooklyn?” Sam asks, as though they’re a couple of businessmen that have met while waiting for a meeting to begin. It’s Bucky’s turn to quirk an eyebrow at Sam, but he finds himself relieved, his lips flapping in response almost immediately. 

“I’m uh… visiting an old friend.” he offers. Sam’s mouth turns up into a knowing smile, his brown eyes light up and Bucky feels at ease. “Gonna take some time, get to know the area. I’m here for recovery, mostly.” 

Sam’s brows take another trip skyward, Bucky finds himself continuing in an easy, charming cadence. “Y’know, sometimes war is hell,” Sam rubs the back of his neck, suddenly self-conscious. “Coming home is tough, too.” It’s a quiet confession that softens Sam’s features and draws another high-pitched, inhuman noise from Steve. Bucky shifts against the wall to face Sam, though he remains in the hall, closing no distance between them.

There is no, _‘why are you here, how long are you staying, we need you to do this or this or that-’;_ only light, non-committal interaction. Bucky is grateful.

“How are you doing in your recovery? ” Sam gestures a hand in Bucky’s direction. Against his better judgement, he nods. 

“There are still crap days. Bust most are good.” 

“You got methods for dealing?” 

Bucky assumes Sam doesn’t mean illegal drugs, so he offers what he imagines is his safest method: 

“Know any good yoga places nearby?” 

That seems to throw Sam for a loop, and his eyes squint for a moment, in thought. 

“I actually might know someone - I forget the address but…” He gives Bucky a wary look. “Look, man, if you don’t mind exchanging info, I can text you the place when I see my friend later this week.” 

Bucky digs into his pocket and tosses his phone mutely to Sam, making sure to smile wide. 

“Thanks, man.” Bucky tries the word out, an imitation of Sam’s jovial, friendly manner. Thanks, man. He doesn’t miss the way that Sam’s eyes narrow at him: Sam knows he is teasing. 

“Do you have somewhere to stay?” Sam asks, suddenly. 

Steve takes a step forward, his big mouth open and his fists clenched.

Sam just holds up a hand, “I was talking to Barnes,” he reprimands Steve with a firm tone, Steve starts to sputter, his eyes bulging.

It could be his imagination, but Bucky thinks Sam _winks_ at him. 

“I uh… Steve’s offered me the second bedroom for when I’m in town.” Bucky finally pieces together the words, watching Steve struggle to remain quiet. Sam nods, as if in approval, but there’s something in his eyes when he turns his gaze to Steve. It makes Bucky suddenly worried; a dry expression that tugs at his gut and makes the Asset flex. 

What is wrong?

A tense few moments follow, with Sam and Steve communicating wordlessly with their eyebrows. Bucky takes the risk to peek around the barrier of the hallway to observe the windows. He feels a twinge of panic and immediately recoils, quietly stepping back to feel the solid wall against his shoulder blades. 

He doesn't miss the worried expression directed at him by Steve, nor is he unaware of the harsh look Sam shoots Steve: a warning. 

Steve’s expression softens immediately and he seems to deflate. 

_What is going on with these two?_

Bucky identifies the emotion rolling around in his gut as jealousy just a moment too late when both Sam and Steve regard him with worried looks. How had he not seen it before: When one shifts, the other counters. The same extra-body awareness movements they’d perfected back in the War has carried over decades later and found their way to Sam. Bucky looks between Sam and Steve, dread building instantly, threatening to choke the air from his lungs. 

“Buck, are you okay?” Steve makes a step forward, reaching out. 

“Yeah,” Bucky squares his shoulders, tries, tries to bring back some of that young Brooklyn kid Steve has yearned for. “Yeah pal, I’m fine I just… I think I’m going to go for a walk… I’ll… be back tonight.” 

He excuses himself as quickly as possible, breezing by Steve, purposefully avoiding any contact as he hefts his backpack onto his shoulder, closing the door behind him with a soft click. 

He picks up the muffled murmurs of Sam’s and Steve’s voices before he’s even reached the stairs. 

Bucky walks quickly, shoulders hunched and hands stuffed in his pockets; pulls his hood up to conceal his face and hopefully emanate as many negative vibes as he possibly can. 

_Don’t bother me,_ he wills the bustling New York streets. As if divine intervention, the streets thankfully obey. 

As he walks, he focuses on his breathing, slow, even, deep breaths. The Asset prowls at the back of his thoughts with each jumping shadow and glint from metal surfaces, and each startle finds him smoothing out his thoughts back at square one. He’s replaying the mental images of Steve and Sam sending eyebrow messages again and again, willing his breathing to remain even and controlled, trying to dissect the twinge of jealousy settled deep in his gut. 

_Steve can have friends._ He rolls his eyes at the thought of reminding himself. Steve _needs_ friends. 

But yet, the idea of someone else sharing non-verbal communication with Steve has both James Barnes and the Asset twisted up with a dangerous circumstance: Possession.

 

Bucky returns to the apartment hours later, in the dark of the early morning, to find Steve snoozing on the couch with a cooking show on the television. Deftly, he lowers himself on the other end of the couch. Steve remains asleep. 

Upon further inspection, the show is apparently a baking competition taking place in Britain. It’s great. 

Chancing bravery, he carefully lifts Steve’s feet from where they lay on the couch, scooting over so that when he places them back down, they’re over his lap. His socks are loose, as though he’d drifted off in the act of removing them. Bucky secures them back on his feet. 

The contestants on the show are creating eclairs - one man has brought a set of little, hand made stairs on which to display his pastries. As he explains to the judges that he originally made them for his father’s chicken coop, he’s saved them for the competition and they will go to their intended fate after the weekend has finished. 

Steve stirs, sighing in his sleep and shifting his body closer to Bucky. 

Bucky watches as Steve’s broad chest rises and falls evenly: no crackling, wheezing, straining lungs. No more sweat to mop off his feverish brow. The cut of his jaw is a little wider, but his nose, slightly crooked from where Calvin Wright had broken it when they were twelve, is the same. Those eyelashes, thick, long and enrapturing, still make Bucky’s breath catch in his throat. 

He runs his fingers over Steve’s socked feet, massaging them gently. The responding rumble from Steve is encouraging. Bucky continues. He wants to take his hands and run them down every inch of Steve’s skin, check for any new marks, as if there could ever be any marrs on that perfect tanned skin. He wants to rest his ear against the warmth of Steve’s chest and listen to the steady, strong, even heartbeat he knows he’ll find beneath. 

Out of nowhere, he wonders how many snaps and buttons are on Steve’s newest uniform. Back in the war, he’d made it his mission to dissect every single one; to secretly time himself on how long it could take him to render Steve ready for him. 

He can’t remember his best time. 

But now, Steve has another uniform; Bucky’s got fingers more nimble than he’d ever been able to manage in his first life. 

_This is a second chance._

Bucky feels his chest contract with emotion. The Asset perks up, worried, but after a couple of deep, centered breaths, Bucky settles them both.  
He’s reminded, then, of one page of his old prayer book that saw much, much less use than the others while he’d been in the trenches. 

Now, though, set up in such a domestic way and bringing himself closer and closer to peace with his past with the Asset, it might get more use than before;

_O God, Author of the world‘s joy, Bearer of the world‘s pain; At the heart of all our trouble and sorrow, let unconquerable gladness dwell._

Bucky’s not sure that it’s gladness pooling in the pit of his stomach or something else entirely, but it makes him shake Steve’s feet on his lap without thinking.

“Hey.”

After a soft moment, “Buck?” comes muffled from Steve’s prone form.

Steve slowly stretches out of his slumber, and Bucky instantly comes to appreciate how fickle clothing sizes are the in the 21st century when Steve’s t-shirt rides up to reveal his abdomen, jeans tugging down to reveal the striped band of his underwear. 

But then Steve’s sitting up, putting an end to Bucky’s ogling before the drool starts making its way out of his mouth. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, I-” and Bucky’s gazing into those eyes that he’s centered his world around, watching as Steve rakes a hand through his hair, sending it up in all directions - a wild, golden promise. The worry lines are back on his forehead, but before he can raise his hand in attempt to smooth them, his mouth is moving. 

“I just want to kiss you.” 

The slow grin that spreads over Steve’s face feels like a punch in the gut, morphing into a gaping wound when Steve instantly closes the distance between them without question. 

His lips are warm and gentle and strangely new with the taste of toothpaste. Bucky’s metal arm is nearly silent as he brings it up to settle on the back of Steve’s neck, feeling the short hairs there. It’s a modern haircut, but somehow still echoes that classic look from the 40s. 

Steve starts slightly as Bucky’s cool fingers make contact with his skin, still warm from his nap, but he recovers quickly and sighs against Bucky’s mouth, a quiet, wordless request that Bucky could never deny. 

He licks at Steve’s bottom lip, inviting. Steve’s hands cling onto the fabric of Bucky’s shirt, dragging him as close as possible. Bucky gladly obeys, shifting until he’s bracketing Steve beneath him, locked between his elbows and briefly pausing while those big blue eyes watch him. Steve sets a hand on Bucky’s face and Bucky leans into the touch, needy. 

“There you are, baby,” Steve whispers. His tone is hushed, soft, and it sounds like a promise that Bucky has been waiting years to hear. He brings his nose close to Steve’s and swallows hard.

“I’m here,” he confirms, “Steve, I’m-” 

But then Steve is kissing him, clinging to him. Bucky closes his eyes, praying that Steve understands his signals now; the vow that has haunted him down to his bones when he was but a shell of a man. 

_I’m with you ‘til the end of the line._

Every inch of his skin that rests against Steve’s body is buzzing with energy, his breathing heavy. He returns Steve’s kiss roughly - he’s out of practice: Seventy years out of practice. But it’s deep and intoxicating and it overtakes him in a second because it’s _Steve._

Bucky’s hips press into Steve as if of their own accord, begging for friction and a grip on reality as his hands cup Steve’s face - it’s not ideal, they’re both so large now that even for Steve’s mammoth couch two sets of limbs operated by hazy, love-drunk brains is an arduous task. 

At Bucky’s pressure, Steve groans into his mouth and knots his fingers in Bucky’s hair. 

Bucky’s hitching Steve’s knee up on his hip before he really processes it: he’s gripping too hard; the weap- _his arm_ \- has miscalculated. The vice-like fingers will surely bruise of he doesn’t loosen - 

“No.” 

At first Bucky fears that Steve means to end their embrace, but he just settles his hand firm overtop of Bucky’s. “Leave it.” he requests. 

A hunger sparks Bucky’s body like kerosene to a match and he’s at Steve’s neck with his mouth, wondering if his rusted old soul can still find that specific damn spot behind Steve’s ear that always made him - 

“Oh!” Steve keens and his thighs press into Bucky’s sides, pulling him tighter. _Wanting him closer._ At least Bucky thought so. 

He presses himself closer still to Steve, rutting his hips against Steve’s obvious erection, warmth spreading through his entire body, ready, _ready-_

Then suddenly, Steve is no longer there and Bucky’s being thrown back against the couch with such force that it creaks. The world spins and the Asset curls back onto its haunches at the back of Bucky’s mind, all other thoughts forgotten. 

Steve has jolted up as though Bucky’s stabbed him. 

In a cold panic, Bucky wonders if he _has_ stabbed Steve. But when he looks down his hands are free of blood stains and the soft, pale rug beneath Steve’s socked feet is clean. 

Steve’s chest is heaving, his eyes wild. He stumbles backward, towards the hall. 

“I-” He stutters. “Buck, I-I can’t I’m… sorry I-” He’s waving his hands, palms out. His voice cracks. Then, too soon, he’s disappeared into his bedroom, the click of the door eerily like disarming the safety of a gun. 

The Asset knows that sound, and it’s on its knees; hands behind its head in an instant. 

_Surrender, obey, comply._

But he’s alone in Steve’s apartment, it’s 2011, and he’d been watching the baking competition. He likes the baking competition. They’ve moved on from eclairs now to something else, but two faces are missing among the contestants. 

How long had the Asset been kneeling on Steve’s floor, anticipating deactivation? Sam had been here a few hours ago, with his soft voice and his gentle eyes, and he’d looked at Steve-

Oh. 

_Oh no._

How could he have not seen it? The way that Steve and Sam shared the wordless conversation, the worry stamped all over their faces? Especially when Bucky had confessed Steve’s offer of the bedroom. 

Of course, of _fucking_ course. 

He’d been too late, too slow in his quest to find himself again that he’d lost Steve to someone else in the process. 

Bucky’s heart pounds dangerously hard, the _shush shush shush_ sound of blood threatening to suffocate him. He tries to focus on his breathing - deep, even, calm.

But the Asset prowls inside of his thoughts, restless. 

_Gentle,_ Bucky wills it, _soothes it. Soft, gentle, slow._

Ding!

It’s his phone, lighting up on the arm of the couch where he’d forgotten it. He wipes away wetness that’s somehow spilled onto his cheeks, checking the device weakly. 

**Natalia:  
I’m looking for some information. Will you help me? No violence. Only intel. **

Bucky clears his throat and pockets the phone, slipping on his boots, shouldering his backpack and shutting the front door behind him. His heart is still racing, aching, in his chest, but as he walks with a mission in mind, at least the Asset is calmed.


	7. Northern Downpour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stalking down the bustling streets after yoga, hot chocolate in hand, Bucky’s ignoring the girls that look his way - they do that now. The girls on the street look his way even though his boots make no noise and the girls at LuluLemon had promised him that his leggings and soft sweaters wouldn’t attract attention. 
> 
> He’s beginning to think they lied. He’s got his head down, eyes averting any challenge, trying to hurry along as he mutters under his breath about Sam Fucking Wilson.

In the week that follows, Bucky spends most of his time helping Natalia. Turns out, she's been tracking Hydra cells for quite some time and the information that the Asset can provide proves invaluable. Bucky is content to stay in the city and providing verbal information. 

Natalia doesn't ask him to come with her when she leaves, and Bucky doesn't ask to come along. Instead, he cleans her apartment and always manages to have a pot of cocoa on the stove alongside several days worth of chili in the fridge. 

She comes back more often than not exhausted but victorious. 

There is a bitterness set into Bucky's bones around Natalia's efforts. Of course, he's proud: he’s the one who trained her in the Red Room after all. To see that she's made it this far, more than likely farther than any of the others, and that she's still intent on seeking the Revenge like he'd so often wished for the girls, makes his heart ache. And Natalia is glad for his help, tells him so every time that she returns then releases him for another week of his own progress.

In the weeks that are his own, Bucky doesn't forget the promise he made to Steve: every morning he sends Steve a picture of his socked feet propped up on his bed roll at the church. He's careful to wear different socks everyday 

Natalia lets him use her washing machines to ensure that everything he wears is adequately cleaned. Bucky likes to sit and listen to the machine, to watch the spinning, sudsy mass swirl around. 

At the end of each night on his way to church for Sanctuary, Bucky sends Steve a photo of his cup of hot chocolate. He's careful to turn the cup just slightly in every photo. That, along with his sock photos every morning, it allows him to assure Steve that he is safe. The photos are not ever used more than once. 

Steve never replies to the photos, but it doesn't really bother Bucky. He knows that if something were truly wrong than Stark, Natalia, or even Sam would let him know. 

In the weeks that are his own he also goes out to buy new clothes, soft clothes that make him feel less like the asset and more like Bucky. 

Thursdays he spends at the church in the company of Miss Edna and OC learning how to make new recipes. Of course, more often than not, they settle on different variations of chili, but sometimes Bucky brings them recipes from the baking competition show and they try their best to recreate them since there are no time limits in church. 

But he still sleeps at the church, in the company of the other soldiers. Turns out, he's not the only one that has nightmares. They seem to all take turns keeping watch, yet every night they wind up with the lights kept on. No one ever says anything.  
In the morning they make their instant oatmeal and crappy black coffee and they all roll up their bed rolls and exit back out into the dangerous unforgiving streets of the city, bonded together but living their own separate lives.

And turns out, Sam Wilson does provide the name and address of a yoga studio nearby. 

But Bucky always wears long sleeves to cover his arm and the girls down at the Lululemon store he finds sell him some leggings that are so soft he doesn't even care about their giggling the entire time he fusses in the dressing room. 

The material is soft, and having them in comparison to the decade old tack pants allows Bucky a freer range of motion, it settles the Asset considerably. 

During yoga, no one says anything to Bucky out of the ordinary. There are a few glances his way, sure, but somehow, whenever they do get too concerning, those women are never back the following week. They're mostly women after all. 

Bucky usually goes to a midday class that promises to have the least number of attendees. He doesn't remember anybody's name, but nobody seems to mind. 

After a few classes, one girl with long red hair offers to fix Bucky's hair into a tail at the start of each class, wait patiently while he tries himself and promises to teach him again next week. Once he's mastered the tail she says that she'll show him how to braid it too. 

Despite himself, Bucky is excited. 

It's a simple and solid constant schedule that manages to bring Bucky back to his center and reminds him of why he came here. 

However, throughout it all, there is that gnawing notion that Steve has found someone else. He likes Sam Wilson, he really does. And God knows, Steve deserves someone who will understand recovery as much as Sam Wilson understands recovery. Bucky had looked Sam Wilson up on the internet; turns out that just like Steve, Sam Wilson had lost his partner in a war from a great height and also couldn't do anything about it but watch. 

How about that. 

But James Barnes had never said that he wasn't selfish, and he had always prided himself on being the more sensible of the pair between himself and Steve, so, really it was only a matter of time. Steve had taken too long with Peggy, after all: could’ve settled down into normalcy; but he took too long. Some part of Bucky is proud that Steve didn’t wait too long for Sam Wilson.

Stalking down the bustling streets after yoga, hot chocolate in hand, Bucky’s ignoring the girls that look his way - they do that now, even though his hair is up in a tail, Pepper was her name, the one that helped him before each class. The girls on the street look his way even though his boots make no noise and the girls at LuluLemon had promised him that his leggings and soft sweaters wouldn’t attract attention. 

He’s beginning to think they lied. He’s got his head down, eyes averting any challenge, trying to hurry along as he mutters under his breath about Sam Fucking Wilson.

Too soon, he’s brought himself back to the door of Steve's apartment, two weeks worth of rehearsed words stuck in his throat and a longing that just wouldn't quit. 

He hadn’t been back here for several weeks, and now, he finds himself standing outside of Steve's apartment door, scuffing the toes of his boots against the tile and flexing his fingers as though the act will bring him courage. 

Finally, after what seems like hours, he's mustered up the nerve and he shoves open the door with perhaps a little too much force.

He instantly wishes he hadn’t.

Steve bolts up from his seat at the little kitchen island, his chair clattering to the floor. 

Sam _fucking_ Wilson, who'd been sitting beside Steve, gets to his feet with much more grace and extends an arm out in front of Steve. 

To shield him or stop him, Bucky doesn't know. What he does know is that he's interrupted what seems to be a fairly intimate moment between the two of them. 

So he stands in the doorway for far too long, opening and closing his mouth like some sorta dumbass fish. Steve's face begins to redden and Sam Wilson lowers his arm, easing his stance. He raises a brow at Bucky, who somehow manages to stop floundering. 

But all he can do is breeze past the two men’s judging stares and go straight into the guestroom Steve had offered him a couple of weeks ago. He wishes he could just slam the door, he wishes he could stomp his feet; the Asset overrides him: quiet, stealthy, unseen. 

Well, too bad. He'd been seen all right. 

Bucky shelters himself against the wall in the farthest corner of the room, sliding down the wall until he's cross-legged with the door in his line of sight. No one comes in, but he knows they wouldn’t dare. 

He focuses on regulating his breathing and trying to calm the Asset, who, for the first time in weeks, is thrashing about like a caged animal. 

Moments, minutes, _hours_ pass, and Bucky resurfaces to find the apartment silent. 

He knows that Sam Wilson has gone home, and that Steve must be in his bed by now.  
The ache in his bones has not resided, though the Asset has calmed somewhat. He reaches for bravery, now, decades of it. 

He rises to his feet, tries his best to fix his hair back into the perfect tail that pepper had helped him with while making sure to toe off his boots. He's not going to need them. 

The door knob on his bedroom door is cool when he touches it with his flesh hand and that's all of the hesitancy that he allows himself. When he opens his bedroom door slowly, something blooms in his chest that feels a lot like hope when he realizes that Steve's bedroom door, which is across the hall, has been left wide open: an invitation. Hopefully.

Steve's light from his bedside table has been left on, and there's a book laying open next to Steve, who’s nestled down in his blankets, mouth slightly agape and his breathing even: asleep. 

Another deep breath, and Bucky's crossed the hall to stand in Steve's doorway. 

Still another, and he finds himself beside the bed. His own incompetencies and the asset’s nerves start to dig their claws into his mind, but before they can find purchase he shoos them away by deftly tugging back the blankets, sliding into bed beside Steve. 

His heart's pounding but he squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to listen to the blood pumping behind his temples, holding perfectly still under the blankets. One last deep breath, and he shuffles closer, laying his head right on Steve's chest. He focuses on listening to the strong steady uninterrupted heartbeat that even now, almost a century later, makes him cast his eyes skyward in silent prayer, silent thanks. 

Steve shifts, and for a moment fear seizes Bucky's body all over again, but there's no need for it because Steve's arms wrap around Bucky shoulders as if that's how it's always been. 

And for Bucky it's true, that is how it's always been. His body slowly settles, his mind settles, the Asset settles. It’s okay.

“Hey,” Comes from above him, that sleep heavy tenor of a murmur slotting something into place deep within Bucky he hadn't noticed had been missing these past few weeks. 

He makes no sound, no effort to say any of the words he'd been rehearsing. 

Instead, for a moment, he merely shuts his eyes and squeezes his arms around Steve’s middle, desperate to feel Steve's warmth against him. 

He is careful though, keeps his embrace quick, gentle, soft. Pulls away only to settle his metal arm across Steve's belly and move his head off his chest. 

Steve's hands begin to card through Bucky's hair, and he can feel them stop once they reach the sloppy tail he had attempted to salvage. Steve pulls the little elastic from Bucky's hair, and he makes no move to protest the action, because the next thing he knows Steve's fingers are back, drifting through the full length of Bucky's hair uninhibited. 

It's a soothing motion that he matches his breath to. 

“I liked your pictures.” Steve whispers after a few moments, as though he's confessing something secret. “I didn't know you had so many socks.”

Bucky wants to make some quick remark, something that will have Steve rolling his eyes and swatting him away, but the emotions are so heavy and lodged in his throat that he just shakes his head, attempting to clear his thoughts to breathe in the smell of Steve's laundry detergent. 

It takes Bucky a while to muster up the courage, he seems to need more than he's ever remembered. More courage, it seems, than it took him to live through the events of Azzano. More than it took on that fucking train car, his gun empty of bullets and nothing but faith to make it through the next few moments. Even when his faith failed him and he plummeted down the Frozen mountainside, only to be dragged through the snow and come face-to-face with that pudgy faced weasel eyed doctor, he had never needed this much courage. So much, in fact, that the words leave him feeble and weak, so hushed that someone without Steve's enhanced hearing may not have even heard them. 

“Does he call you Sugar, too?”

And it's not the speech that Bucky had prepared, the one that he spent 2 weeks fussing over which ended with him surrendering Steve to Sam. No, the words that leave him in that moment are fueled with a desperate hope that perhaps, just maybe, he can convince Steve to stay with him. 

But he can feel Steve tilt his head to the side, like some sort of dumbfounded Golden Retriever that hasn't realized that his owner has thrown the ball already. His hand stops making its way through Bucky's hair, and moves to rubbing gentle circles on his metal shoulder blade. He doesn't seem to care that Bucky can't feel the warmth of his hand, seems to know that the pressure there is just enough.

“Who?” Steve stupidly asks. Bucky rolls his eyes. 

“Him,” He insists, his voice rising an octave. “Sam Wilson.”

He doesn't know what he expects, but it's not the deep, genuine laughter that flows out of Steve that moment. 

Bucky’s body is paralyzed with fear, his expectations and the real events so drastically different that the Asset wants to spring into motion and take over, to protect the soldier. But, before it can happen, Steve is pressing his lips to Bucky's hair and squeezing his arms tight around him, drawing him even closer.

“No, no, no.” Steve murmurs. His tone is gentle. “Baby it’s not like that, Sam is just my _friend.”_

“Yeah, buddy. So was I at first.” the quip that leaves his mouth is so unmistakably the man of his past that Bucky can't help mirror Steve's responding grin when he meets his eyes. The hope that had been tugging at his heart clenches it tight as Steve presses another kiss into his hair. 

“No, Bucky,” Steve insists. His hand tugs at Bucky’s chin until their eyes are locked again. “You’re it for me, you always have been.” 

Bucky should open his mouth, should blurt out all the words that he’d rehearsed in the past two weeks, even if it’s just to show that he can, that he knows that many. 

But everything suddenly drains out of him, and the past two weeks of keeping up routine have left him exhausted. So here, guarded by Steve's strong, thick arms around him and that steady heartbeat against his cheek, he settles in and finally sleeps. 

 

Life resumes in a strange, dream-like stillness following the exchange over Steve’s relationship status with Sam Wilson. 

Bucky goes to yoga, makes chili, drinks hot chocolate and tries to kiss Steve as often as time permits. 

Stark calls for Bucky to make appearances at the tower so that he can scan Bucky’s body with all his machines. Bucky complies, because he’s grown to admire the little robots that scoot around, cleaning this, fetching that and taking Stark’s hand-flapping and discouraged noises all in stride. 

Bucky feels as though not much is accomplished during the visits themselves, but Stark keeps inviting him back for more scans and the workshop keeps getting messier and messier, so Bucky assumes that there is some method to the madness. 

He’s quiet during the visits, OC always sitting just at the edge of his field of vision, though her intervention is never needed to calm the Asset. She, like Steve, speaks with her eyebrows, quirking and raising and furrowing them throughout the hours spent with Stark. 

OC has become a close companion, somehow always managing to find Bucky when he’s at church, sometimes meeting him at Starbucks after yoga. Together they like to walk the city aimlessly. 

Sometimes OC tells him about her war, the one that she braved in the desert with her four-legged partner at her side, trekking ahead of the unit with light feet and sharp reflexes. Bomb detection, she explained simply. 

She wiggled all her fingers at Bucky, “Physically I came out whole, but…” she trails off and shrugs and all Bucky can do is nod sadly, knowing.

“We thought we knew who the bad guys were; who we were out there to fight, but…” Conversations like this always end with weak puffs on a shared cigarette: Their easiest unhealthy decision in a modern world.  
Other days with OC are lighter: once they take the train to the Air & Space Museum and wander around the Captain America exhibit together. OC snaps photos as Bucky corrects factoids and even a couple of locations of enemy bases. He notes a couple of things to ask Natalia when she returns from her most recent trip.

OC takes him to the record store and shows him a modern band heavily inspired by the decades he’d lived his first life in. He loves them and buys them all; the store owner lets him put them on the store machine and he teaches OC basic swing steps, twirling her and lifting her just to watch her smile and laugh. When he brings the records back to the apartment, Steve makes a face, but by the end of the night they’re humming along and rehearsing old steps to Dancing’s Not A Crime and Say Amen. 

Bucky has officially taken over Steve’s second bedroom, storing his belongings there while sleeping - most nights - at the church with the others. Steve had handed him a key after three days of Bucky hanging around. 

OC had made a high-pitched squealing sound when he’d showed it to her, and promptly dug a little rainbow flag keychain out of her backpack. Overjoyed, Bucky had planted a kiss right on her cheek and vibrated with excitement as she’d twirled the two together, latching the solid metal key onto the flimsy little fabric flag. No matter where he is, Bucky can reach into his pocket to feel the soft satin fabric,it calms him. 

\---

Bucky lays on his back, legs stretched out as he watches the morning sun span over the photographs and sketches he’s taped up neatly on the walls of his bedroom at Steve’s apartment. He knows from the Asset that he’s been inside museums before - or at least seem them through a scope. So, beneath each of the photos he's taken or the sketches that he’s secretly claimed from Steve’s notebooks, he uses a label maker he’d found in Tony’s workshop to add those sophisticated little blurbs that always accompany masterpieces. 

Below a sketch he’d torn out of a sketchbook of Steve’s, hidden on the bookshelf beneath a stack of records depicting Steve as he’d been before: before the 21st century, before the serum, before the war. Sharp features and that same crooked nose, fire behind worn charcoal eyes. Bucky had thought himself clever when he’d taped up a promotional photo from the Air and Space Museum of Steve as the rest of the world saw him: big, broad and All-American. His captions had brought a snicker out of Sam Wilson and a moment of fish-mouth gaping from Steve himself: 

**BIG, DUMB SGR and BIGGER, DUMBER SGR**

Pepper from the yoga studio had taken Bucky’s photo at his request, “for a project,” he’d told her. She’d directed him without touching him into the light of the front window of the studio and snapped a few photos. Those, too are up on his wall. Sam Wilson had printed them for him. Some days he spends hours cross-legged in front of them, committing his own features to memory. 

**NAMASTE, MOTHERFUCKERS**

 

There’s a tablet that, at first, stayed in the corner of the room, but after a couple of lessons from Sam Wilson, Bucky’d been using it to pour over the internet. Sam Wilson was correct: the internet is very helpful. Bucky learns many things in the span of a few more weeks, but he’s got two hands-down favorites: 

1\. Young people of the internet have, for years, speculated on the possibility of a secret romance between American war hero Sargent J.B.Barnes and his Captain, Captain America himself. There are papers, art, even collegiate dissertations. Bucky keeps trying to remember his initial desire to purchase a shirt with those bold, bright colors. Rainbow. Steve chuckles and just flaps his hands whenever Bucky tries to get him to read the articles. So Bucky just pours over them alone.  
2\. Gay porn. It turns out that there is a great many things that he’d missed out on in the past seventy years, and much to Steve’s frustration, he’s determined to try some things. There is so much to watch. To learn. _To try._

“No.” Steve says one morning as Bucky’s padding over in his socked feet, tablet in hand. Steve is shaking his head as he pours coffee into two mugs. He sets Bucky’s beside the sugar on the counter; fetches the cream from the ice box. There’s a list on the table: things Steve still has to pack before he embarks on a two-week press tour with Sam Wilson to talk about, well, Bucky: how recovery has done the world’s longest-running POW amazingly well and how he’s now interested in yoga poses for things other than spiritual wellness. Okay, maybe not _that part._

Bucky fixes his coffee, ignoring Steve’s protests as he easily rotates the tablet and presses ‘play’ on the most recent video he’s taken a liking to. 

Steve’s eyebrows make all sorts of expressions and Bucky’s not sure which is more comical - the noises from the video or Steve’s reactions to it. But, for all the jumping and scowling facial expressions, Steve remains silent until the video concludes six minutes later. 

“You know you should really mute those before you show them to me,” Steve shakes the carton of cream Bucky’s way before putting in back into the ice box and sipping his black coffee. But, as he leans against the counter, something in his face sparks a bit of hope within Bucky. He thinks he can see compromise on the horizon. 

“You really want to do some of that stuff?” Steve asks after a long moment. His face is twisted with discomfort. “I mean, it’s not like you can...” 

“Steve,” Bucky’s laughing quietly. “You’re acting like we’re in church in front of a bunch of nuns! C’mon! Just ‘cause I have trouble getting it up now doesn’t mean I always will! I re-learned how to piss, for christ’s sake, I can work on an erection if you’ll lend me a hand!” 

“Oh my god,” Steve smothers his face in his hands, shoulders shaking. “You still wet the bed sometimes!” He’s laughing now, too, and he tosses a dishcloth at Bucky’s face. “You’re such an asshole!” 

“And you really are a hundred years old,” Bucky gets up from his chair and works to slot himself against Steve, backing him up into the counter. Steve closes a fist around the fabric of Bucky’s shirt and kisses him gently, still grinning. The bitter taste of black coffee sits on his tongue as Bucky deepens the kiss, deciding then that it’s a taste he could put up with for the rest of his life. 

“Remember...” he murmurs now, running his hands down the solid warmth of Steve’s sides to slip them beneath his too-tight-across-the-chest cotton shirt. He makes his voice low, pitching it as best he can to match what he remembers of his voice from before - before Hydra, before the Red Room, before Schmidtt and that damn war. 

Steve’s heavy sigh brings Bucky back to the present, but he’s forgotten the rest of his sentence Luckily, Steve speaks. 

“You think you’re up for this kind of thing?” 

“I know I am,” Bucky insists. “C’mon, Steve, all we gotta do is start slow. I promise no jumping in to anything too crazy. Look,” he fumbles for the tablet and some tabs on the internet for a moment, but remaining pressed against Steve; who makes no moves to remove him, his hands settled low on Bucky’s back. Bucky settles on an article he’d kept open for this very conversation, and thrusts the device into Steve’s face. Resolve gathered, he starts to string words together.

“It’s called body worship- No, no c’mon Steve, I’m being serious!” 

Steve’s creeping smirk descends back down as he wills his face into neutrality. 

“It’s slow, it’s non-invasive, and it’s…” He trails off as his words get lodged in his throat, tries to swallow past them. With a groan, he slumps his head forward into Steve’s shoulder so he doesn’t have to see his jackass face as he confesses all of this like some kind of damned sinner, which, really, he is, come to think of it. 

“It reminds me of what we used to do… so… it won’t be that much different, not at first.” He wraps his arms around Steve’s waist and tugs him as close as possible. Steve’s still holding the tablet up, presumably scowling at it over Bucky’s shoulder, but he hasn’t heard the glass screen crack so Steve mustn’t be too poor off. “If you don’t feel the same way… if… if there’s… someone else that’s fine-”

“What? Buck, I told you, Sam-” Steve tries to squirm out from Bucky’s embrace but he locks his arms and sets his weight against him: two can play this game. Steve shuts up and stays still.

“I just…” Bucky continues, “I just need us to start making this kind of progress. Everytime we sit on that damn couch and make out like a couple of teens at the pictures I feel like I need more… not… not as much as the video but Steve, I need-” He finally runs out of reserves and slumps against Steve, head hammering, his throat dry and skin clammy. “OC says I’m ‘thirsty,’” He rasps out a half-hearted, weak laugh and is rewarded with Steve’s baritone chuckle that sends a warmth all the way down to his toes. 

“And what am I? A nice tall drink of water, huh?” 

“Listen, punk,” Bucky tries, but his smile is too wide and his head is still swimming. His body feels heavy, but Steve must knows that, because he shifts his own weight to take most of Bucky’s, leaning back against the counter. 

“Just… tell me you’ll think on it, okay?” he asks Steve. “When you go on tour with Sam just… think about it.” 

Bucky’s not sure if Steve still has the tablet in his left hand, because his right has come up and begun to rub circles over his t-shirt: slow, methodical, patient. Bucky snuggles himself against Steve’s warmth and focuses on his breathing. Steve _must_ still be reading, because it’s just the one hand tracing along Bucky’s mismatched shoulders. Bucky shuts his eyes. 

Moments, minutes, maybe hours later,

“You must be tired,” Steve’s voice is hushed - the light in the apartment is cast lower than when Bucky had closed his eyes. How _long_ had they been standing there in the kitchen? 

Steve moves away from the counter and Bucky steps back, his body instantly chilled without Steve. He rubs his right arm to chase away the goosebumps, his metal hand doing little to soothe it. 

“I- yeah, yeah I am. How long were we standing there?” 

Steve’s eyebrows make a little jump, glancing to the clock on the stove. 

“Uh… two hours, I guess. I just…” He clears his throat, rubs the back of his neck. “There were links to other things to read, and… I think you fell asleep.” 

“Could be…” A fog sits in the front of Bucky’s brain and he watches each of his feet move across the tiled kitchen floor, passing over the living room rug-so soft that he can’t help but curl his toes into it with each step. 

“Does this happen a lot?” 

It’s the first time Steve’s voice has taken on that tone since-

 

_“Look, Steve, I told you I'm fine! You see any blood? I still got all my arms and legs don't I? That's more than any of the other guys that we left back there!” In his big dumb uniform with his big dumb face, Steve watches Bucky like he's some kind of bum grenade that's been chucked his way. Those eyebrows crawl all over his forehead with different expressions so fast that Bucky has zero hope of ever deciphering them._

_The men are milling about outside the tent, it's not like there's any privacy here. But they’re in Steve’s private tent and the flap is closed and that's the best they could ask for._

_Steve moves towards Bucky, those big dumb boots disturbing the packed dirt floor under his weight. He sets his big dumb hands on either one of Bucky's biceps and starts to rub._

_Bucky hadn't even realized he'd been shivering. But here he is, shaking like a leaf in the Winter wind, teeth chattering and legs suddenly jelly._

_“Bucky, how about we…” Steve doesn't get a chance to finish the sentence because Bucky's grabbed him around those big dumb shoulders and hauled him close before he even realizes._

_Steve lets it happen and starts to rub his big dumb hands over Bucky's back. He's not sure how long they stay like that, only knows that when he comes back to himself there's no more evening sunlight filtering through the gaps in the tent flaps, and the voices outside have significantly lessened. Steve remains though, holding most of Bucky's weight, still on his own two feet._

_When Bucky pulls away his face is wet and he watches as Steves eyebrows knit together, and instinctively tries to reach up to smooth the lines on his forehead. Before his hand reaches his face Steve reaches out and places their fingers together. He looks down at them, almost the same size, except now Steve is the one with the bigger hands. And any other time Bucky would probably laugh about it, but-_

_“ I - I can't feel my arm,” He manages to slur out._

_Between one instant in the next, he finds himself seated on Steve's dumb little cot. There’s sweat on his forehead and his teeth are chattering again. Steve's right there, and Bucky tries to reach his hand out try to push him away, to warn him, but his fingers meet nothing but empty air before he heaving up all over the floor._

_“Shit, Buck, what did they-” Steve’s voice sounds like it’s coming out of a megaphone: too loud and too close. But there must be cotton stuffed in Bucky’s ears at the same time because it’s all he can hear. Steve’s hands are on him and Bucky jerks away, what if Steve’s got those cuffs? Bucky’s gonna wind up strapped to that table again and any minute now that pug-faced doctor with his stench of death is gonna come traipsing into the room, he’ll shove something over Bucky’s face and slice up his skin and then they’re gonna write everything down. They’ll ask him questions but James Buchanan Barnes is nothing if not loyal so all these fucking Nazis are gonna get outta him is his damn serial number._

_Minutes, hours, days later he’ll still be on that table and it’ll all be worth it ‘cause Steve will come for him, he’ll always come, and Steve-_

_Steve_

_Steve?_

 

“Steve?” Bucky's on the floor of Steve’s 21st century apartment - it’s black as pitch but he’d know the hand on his face in any lighting. His tongue is cement in his mouth, his ears are full of cotton, and the sirens blaring behind his eyes are starting to dissipate into low foghorns. Black shadows swim in his vision. Somehow, he finds himself stumbling around in his own mind looking for-

The Asset.

Small, feeble, _afraid,_ the Asset perks up ever so slightly at the sound of Steve’s voice. 

“I’m here.” 

Big, dumb fingers sliding through Bucky’s hair ground him and he’s starting to even out his breathing. 

“That’s twice in a row, where’d you go, Buck?” 

A whimper claws its way out of Bucky’s throat, uncalled for and he’s struggling to his feet but Steve leans against him as he’s propped himself up on his elbows, the extra weight too much. 

“Where are we?” Steve prompts, tactic changed. 

Bucky’s teeth are chattering and suddenly his left side is burning. The smell of infection is searing his nose and when he looks down, expecting to see the mutilated, rotting flesh of his severed arm and getting only the gleaming, wicked silhouette of the permanent weapon. He’s not sure which is worse. 

He’s retching, suddenly, all over Steve’s soft carpet. 

Well, _fuck this._

Then Steve’s hefting Bucky onto his feet, practically dragging his full weight down the hallway into the bathroom. He nudges open the toilet with his bare foot and practically dumps Bucky in front of it. Bucky hears the bathtub start up from behind him, the roar of the water trying to drown out the sounds of his vomit tearing itself from his body and sloshing into the toilet bowl. 

_Fucking Christ._

When he’s heaving up nothing but groans and air, Steve takes Bucky’s shirt and tugs it over his head; manhandles him as upright as he can be and shimmies his pants off. He almost falls over twice, and through the haze of his brain he’s pretty sure he hears Steve bruise his knee trying to brace him against the little sink vanity. 

Then, he’s in the tub. He’s certain the water’s splashed all over the floor, but his head smacks against the side of the bath so he voices his concern with a grunt and a wince. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Steve murmurs. Big, dumb hands are suddenly rubbing at his skull where it had met the porcelain edge. Bucky leans into the touch, trying - _trying_ to even out his breaths now. 

“That’s it.” Steve must have a cup or something because he’s pouring water over Bucky’s shoulders, then in his hair, shielding Bucky’s face with the hand that had been pitying his bumped head. “Good, Buck, good.” and something smells good - like laundry out on the line and crisp, new bed linens on a summer night. 

Both of Steve’s hands are kneading Bucky’s scalp - stopping momentarily to wipe shampoo bubbles off his forehead before they creep into his eyes. Each scrape of Steve’s fingers through his hair sends a wave of molasses through Bucky’s muscles, willing him to relax. He leans his neck against the cool surface of the edge of the bath. Not the most comfortable for his neck, sure, but he’s sat through much, much worse. 

Steve rinses his hair with that same cup, again shielding his eyes from the wrath of the shampoo bubbles. Next, he’s carding conditioner through it - Bucky’s surprised he remembered, but his eyes are heavy and words are hard, so he just huffs a breath and cracks a smile. Water is splashed playfully onto his shoulders, 

“Watch it.” Steve jests. 

Steve’s found a comb somewhere and is working at all the knots with gentle precision. Once he’s done, he rinses the conditioner out and does another once-over with the comb. A comb-over.

Hah.

He hears Steve pull the plug to the tub, and shifts his weight when Steve starts to scrub his shoulders with a washcloth: arm, chest, stomach, thighs. Bucky makes another weak chortle as Steve washes his inner thighs and feels the smile on his lips when Steve scolds him, “Quiet you,” as he scrubs his soft cock and balls with the cloth. He finishes with Bucky’s legs as the water recedes to hip-level and rinses him with refill after refill of the cup. Finally, the water’s gone and Steve takes a towel to Bucky’s hair and his breath hitches when those big, dumb lips plant a kiss right smack in the center of his forehead. 

_Stupid sap._

Steve helps Bucky out of the tub with minimal bruising on either end, wrapping him up in a towel that reminds him of the ruined carpet in the living room. He buries his nose in a fistful of the towel and lets Steve guide him into Steve’s bedroom. 

He sits on the side of the bed and Steve cards his hands through his hair once more, twisting it up. When he takes his hands away, Bucky’s hair is secured in a bun.

“How did you…?”

“It’s a secret.” Steve’s tone is light and he presses another sappy kiss to Bucky’s forehead. 

He rubs the towel against Bucky’s body to help him dry, before slinging a pair of underwear around his ankles. Bucky stands with Steve’s help when prompted and Steve whisks those suckers up so fast you’d think they’d just been caught by nuns. Whatever, as long as they’re clean. 

Steve pulls back the covers and Bucky curls into the bed, breathing in that fresh linen smell again and the scent of Steve, the one his big dumb sap had left permeated into the sheets. Steve nestles himself behind Bucky, slinging his arm over his waist and looping their fingers together to pull Bucky close against him. 

“Did you read an article that you liked?” He asks after a moment. It comes out slurred, mid-yawn. He feels Steve smile against the seam of his shoulder where skin meets metal.

“I did, actually,”

But Bucky doesn’t hear the rest: he’s asleep faster than he’s ever managed before.


	8. Far Too Young to Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “God fucking left me, Steve!” Now Bucky’s shouting. “He left me in the woods after the damn train and then it was the devil who walked beside me! And you know what?” He’s back in Steve’s space, curling his fingers over that square jaw and jerking Steve’s face nose-to-nose with his. “If loving you brought me all of this, then I’m still fucking grateful for it.”
> 
> “Don’t.” Steve whispers.

“What’s this?” 

Something in the tone of Steve’s voice sends a live-wire spark crawling up Bucky’s spine, awakens his nerves and threatens anxiety. 

He’d just unlocked the front door, coming home after a long yoga class. 

Bucky pads into the main room, observing Steve’s bags already packed for his departure with Sam Wilson. A small part of him slumps with despair at being left alone in the big apartment, but truthfully, a part of him will be glad for the space. 

Despite that, the edge in Steve’s voice was definitely not how he’d imagined this to go. 

Steve is standing at the kitchen table, the little black sketchbook clutched in his hand, package of charcoal unopened. 

Bucky shrugs his backpack onto the floor, intentionally keeping it by the door. 

“Its, uh- it’s a present, Steve. For you.” He fidgeting now, his right thumbnail picking at the satin rainbow keychain in his pocket. He wills himself to clear his throat. “I’m sorry I didn't wrap it, I just figured that it would be okay to leave it where you’d see it…” His voice leaves him, the worry lines on Steve’s forehead deepen and he regards the meager little post-it note. 

“November twelfth… nineteen… forty four.” Steve murmurs. His jaw is tight, his shoulders tense. The Asset stirs at the first wave of panic. 

“I remember, that’s…” Bucky steps towards Steve. His hands are shaking. “We got married, Steve. Back during the war. Gabe, he…” 

But Steve has set down the sketchbook with a clatter; eyes cold, jaw set. 

The electricity under Bucky’s skin fizzles and wanes, replaced by something cold, slow, and suffocating: fear. 

Steve’s fingers brush over the sketchbook as he steps away. Bucky has to look at it to ensure it is black, not red; that there is no dark star emblazoned there. Hands on a book; the panic and bile rising up to gnaw at the back of his throat:

This is too familiar. His mouth goes dry suddenly. 

_Handler,_ the Asset yawns and stretches, like a dog eager for a run. Bucky’s heart begins to race, his pulse hammering in his ears. He stumbles back a step, eyes never leaving Steve. 

_Steve._

“Steve,” he tries. The single syllable escapes him in a whimper. He’s suddenly against the wall, cornered between the big television and the record player. Something behind him topples over; a record, maybe, but he doesn’t dare make to check it for scratches. 

“It wasn’t real.” Steve says. 

“What?” Bucky is desperate to have heard him wrong. 

“In France. That ‘wedding’ crap. It wasn’t real, Buck.” 

“Bullshit, I was _there!_ ” Bucky’s knees have stopped shaking, anger sparking, and he straightens himself up. “I stood there with you in the woods and Gabe Jones-” 

“It was just to rally the men, Buck,” Steve rakes a hand through his hair, shaking his head. His eyes are cold steel and there isn’t a single worry line in his forehead for Bucky to smooth out. “To get them motivated for the march the next morning.”

“Fuck you, Steve, _fuck you._ Don’t you fucking talk to me about that morning,” Bucky spits, “Not if you’re gonna- just- just- fuck, I was there Steve! We stood there and Gabe gave us his half-assed vows and we jumped his broom and we got _married._ ”

“It didn’t mean anything. I-” 

A growl escapes Bucky and in the next moment he’s pinned Steve against the wall, metal fingers clutching Steve’s t-shirt. Bucky knows his eyes are wild and feral, his breath heaving. He tightens his hold on Steve’s shirt, hears the stitching give way and tear the fabric, presses Steve harder into the wall. 

“The fuck it didn’t mean anything, you goddamn punk. It meant _everything._ ” he insists. 

“It didn't matter-” Steve tries again. “No one would have ever-” 

“We were careful Steve, Jesus! Just because we were careful doesn't mean it meant _nothing._ ” 

“They would have killed us once we got back from the war, anyhow. The-” 

“We never made it home from that fucking war,” Bucky spits out. He shoves Steve, releasing his hold and stepping back. 

“God doesn’t allow-” 

“God fucking left me, Steve!” Now Bucky’s shouting. “He left me in the woods after the damn train and then it was the devil who walked beside me! And you know what?” He’s back in Steve’s space, curling his fingers over that square jaw and jerking Steve’s face nose-to-nose with his. “If loving you brought me all of this, then I’m still fucking grateful for it.” 

“Don’t.” Steve whispers. 

“You don’t get to decide this,” Bucky grits. “I tiptoe ‘round here like the memory you treat me as and for what, Steve? You treat me like a ghost but that’s not who I am anymore. I’m here, right in front of you, and I keep coming back because you loved me once, and I know you love me now. This isn’t 1945, Steve. There’s more people like us and we can _help_ them-” 

“No,” Steve shakes his head, shoving Bucky aside with a sweep of his arms. “I - I can’t.” 

Steve’s long strides carry him out the door within seconds. When it slams closed behind him, it takes Bucky a painfully long moment to realize that he’s been left: standing alone in the apartment, struck dumb and shaking like a leaf. 

Sam Wilson returns only a week into their two-week circuit to check on Bucky. He’s sat up in the brightest corner of the living room when Sam Wilson lets himself into the apartment, casting his eyes around as if searching for something other than Bucky, who is so obviously positioned in the warm afternoon sun. 

Sam sits on the couch, looking travel-weary and frankly, pretty fed up with one Star-Spangled Man if Bucky imagines so himself. 

“You okay?” Sam asks. 

Bucky allows him a nod; then after a minute, a shrug. 

“I stayed away for so long because I needed to help myself.” Bucky murmurs from his seat in the sun. The soft, plush carpet beneath him soothes his shoulders down, away from his ears. “I still have shit to work on. I can’t control whether Steve gets the help he needs or not.” “Those are some wise words, Barnes.” The nod sam Wilson gives in his direction is one of approval; Bucky is thankful for Sam Wilson’s praise. 

He tries to tell him but then Sam Wilson bids him good day and quietly slips out of the apartment - to go where, who knows? 

Bucky is thankful for a great many things: for Steve, for OC and Ms. Edna,, for Natasha who helps him to feel useful, for yoga classes and Pepper who puts his hair into buns and tails with the utmost patience. Bucky is thankful for Howar- Tony Stark and his ever-willing maintenance of Bucky’s arm. Even now, Bucky is thankful for Sam Wilson and his uncanny abilities to deter Steve’s attentions to things like missions and public appearances when Bucky starts to feel the apartment walls closing in on him; feeling the need to separate himself from Steve’s nervous gaze. 

Bucky is not, in any way shape or form, thankful for the chilly mid-November morning when he’s jolted out his meditation to Natalia barging through the front door of the apartment. Her words send a chill through his body that he’s not felt for years now: the incapacitating, smothering weight of cryofreeze making its way through every fibre of his soul. 

“они егo, мать медведь.” _They have him, Mother Bear,_ “у них есть Стив-” 

__They have Steve._ _

Bucky doesn’t ask her who ‘they’ are, he knows by the set of her jaw and the way that her fingers curl into fists that this is an evil they both know all too well. He’s on his feet in one moment, in the next Howard Stark is strapping a vest to Bucky’s chest. Heavy, thick, _tactical._

The Asset cocks its head to the side and watches Stark with interest. There’s velcro on the buckles of the vest and it pokes into Bucky’s sides just enough to cause a discomfort, it grounds him beside the Asset - there’s a common goal here, after all. Natasha is ticking furiously at some computer keys of the jet: right, they’ve boarded a jet. She’s murmuring the information they’d been going over for weeks now: this base, that one, this contact, those./p >

“With any luck, this location here is where they’re holding Steve.” He hears her say. 

__Steve._ _

Bucky sways on his feet - the Asset steadies him. He focuses his gaze on the holographic compass projected onto the windscreen of the jet. He can’t remember if he’s ever been in a jet like this one, but Natalia is here, along with Stark and Sam Fucking Wilson, so Bucky doesn’t need to take inventory. The team - his team, will do that for him. Instead, the sounds and shapes blur as Bucky and the Asset focus onto the level point of the compass: a true north if there ever was one. 

__Steve._ _

_Bucky is on the train, in the car. He can hear the Nazi Hydra sonofabitch stalking towards him; can see, from his hiding spot behind a crate, Steve’s shoulder through the glass window of the door. So much for stealth. If this wasn't the middle of a war, Bucky could have laughed out loud._

__

__

_He’d told Howard that damn costume would get Steve killed one day._

__

_The gun in Bucky’s hand is empty of bullets._

__

_The Hydra Nazi Sonofabitch is getting closer, the echoes of his boots on the metal floor of the train car stirring something within Bucky that makes him grip the handle of the gun harder, even though it’s empty._

__

_He can still see Steve’s shoulder through the glass in the door._

__

_Fuck, Howard, couldn’t you have made him a more tactical suit?With a glance upwards towards God, Bucky Barnes sends his last prayer:_

__

_If I’m really the first to go, please let me wait for him when I get to the gates - whichever they are. wherever we’re bound to be going._

__

_Then he straightens up, steps forward; over his dead body will Steve die on this Nazi scum train._

__

_There’s a scuffle, a blue light, too much wind and then, then - the look on Steve’s face and those damn worried lines in his forehead looking like they were carved to stay; and something is wrong because Steve is reaching out and Bucky’s trying- straining, and he can’t quite-_

__

__Please let me wait for him when I get wherever we’re bound to be going._ _

__

_“ты это знаешь?_ ” Natalia asks when the jet lands and they’ve begun to creep towards their destination, “ _Do you know it?_ ” 

Bucky feels for the Asset at the back of his mind, crouched low and patient. 

The building is large, steel and cement, graffiti litters the outside and the surrounds are overgrown and wild. Passers by would assume it abandoned, but- 

“I’ve got heat signatures.” Stark’s voice chimes through Natalia’s earpiece - Bucky hears it fine. “Twelve hostiles on the first floor - Sam?” 

“Sending in Redwing for video.” Sam Wilson confirms through Natalia’s comm. 

Bucky can’t help but notice the edge to his voice. 

“Friday get me a thermo scan of the other levels.” Stark murmurs. 

Bucky shifts from one foot to the other. Natalia gives him a knowing look; the Asset stretches like a cat, settling Bucky’s shoulders and coaxing them down from his ears. 

“Aside from twelve on the first floor, there appear to be around twenty hostiles on the lower level, boss.” Friday’s voice reports, “And one heat signature that I recognize as unique to Captain Rogers.” 

“Wilson, talk to me. What’ve you got on that feed?” 

“I got in through the AC duct. It looks… Guys he’s just sitting on the floor. It looks like he’s _meditating._ ” 

Natalia’s mouth turns up in a soft smile and he looks at Bucky, those dark eyes teasing.

There is a plan, then, but Bucky is only half listening. The Asset shifts, ready: this is a familiarity it has ached for. Infiltrate, eliminate, contain, extract. Steve. 

__Steve._ _

Natalia is beside him. Her fiery red hair a beacon in the fluorescent lights of these people who had molded and shaped them so many years ago. Red, Red, Red- but Bucky stopped fearing the color as soon as his Little Bear managed to pull him out from the depths of his Asset’s pain, all to help him remember 

Always impressive, Stark lessens their hostile numbers in a matter of moments with small, efficient projectiles hidden somewhere on his metal suit. Sam Wilson, less gracefully, contains more. 

The permanent weapon they’d given the Asset is put to work and the prized spider spins a deadly web. 

In a matter of seconds, no hostiles remain at the entrance. Minimal effort to clear the first hurdle: but now their presence is known. Half of the hostiles from the floors below begin ascending the stairs. Truly foolish of them: with a wicked grin, the Asset lashes out - James Barnes pulls away, a symphony of effective non-lethality. Easy, really. 

_Too easy._

In a matter of moments they’ve breached and they’re barreling through another door and then there’s Steve, cross-legged on the concrete floor surrounded by the remaining agents. Steve’s eyes meet Bucky’s and something in his gut wrenches so hard that he staggers a step back: 

The worry lines on steve’s forehead are those very same deep and carved lines that, decades ago, had willed Bucky to let go; the same etched into his face when the Asset first encountered him on the bridge. 

Standing to the left of Steve is - is- 

_Broad shoulders step out of the shadows, blond hair gelled back, pristine uniform; buttons glistening when touched by the thin beams of light spilling through tiny windows._

__

_The Asset lies bloodied and beaten on the floor, surrounded by handlers who back away at the sight of the uniform-clad man. From deep within the Asset, the soldier lurches; wants to cry out in jubilation because who else could wear those medals and bear those insignia but Steve? Steve has come for him, with that blond hair and those broad shoulders and strong, sure steps._

__

_“You played the recording?”_

__

_Wait. No. This voice is wrong. No, no, no. The soldier struggles to retreat back inside the Asset’s mind as a chill wracks its body. No. No. Heavy military boots that ate not Steve’s come to rest dangerously close to the Asset’s temple where its head rests on the floor._

__

_“Yes, commander.” A Handler supplies. “It got so confused i think it may have had a seizure.”_

__

_The Commander clicks his tongue, takes a step back. The heel of his boots comes down on the Asset’s flesh fingers and it cannot help the sound that rips out of its throat._

__

_“The 1940s footage?” the Commander presses._

__

_“Yes, sir.”_

__

_“Footage from the Chitauri attack?”_

__

_“Yes sir.”_

__

_“Hm.” The pressure of the boot lifts and the Asset feels its body surging with adrenaline. “There was an interview on Good Morning America, just last week.” The commander continues, indifferent. “The reporter asks about Barnes. Find that footage, wipe him and start over. We can’t have any risks. This is a weapon, gentlemen, and with it we’ll shape the future.”_

__

_“Understood, Commander Pierce.”_

__

_Another shift, and the boot comes down again on the Asset’s fingers. It cannot hear its strained, agonized noise over the chorus of,  
“Hail Hydra!”_

Bucky has to shake his head to clear it.

Pierce stands there beside Steve, 

__Steve._ _

In an instant, the cool nature of the HYDRA agents has snapped something in Bucky’s soul and he’s realized what Steve had been doing; what he’d been trying to avoid by simply sitting among them, attempting to retreat far into his own mind like Bucky once tried to teach him:

Steve had been captured to lure Bucky back to his prison. 

But this isn’t a train car; there’s nothing between Steve and Bucky but a couple of bodies. 

Bucky takes a step forward, determined to reach Steve and smooth those worry lines out once and for all, _till the end of the line-_

But something unseen reels Bucky back and tears his mind open with those few, deadly syllables. 

“страстное желание,” _Longing._

No one is beside him: there is no one else. The Asset is thrashing and Bucky’s arms are out, pleading, begging. Not now, please, please, _I’ve kept you safe - please._

The Asset claws and digs its way out of the recesses of Bucky’s mind, a desperate, primal obedience begging for slaughter. 

Surely, this was what would become of the Asset, here in the dredges of this base: slaughter. 

Bucky hears the wet, tortured screams slice through the air before he realized that they belong to _him._ The Asset tears through his consciousness, ringing through his ears as he drops to his knees and curls in on himself, praying, _please,_ _**no…**_

A blast sounds somewhere, and suddenly there’s quiet. The words have stopped their onslaught. Caught in between the two parties, writhing on the dirty, bloodied floor, Bucky can recognize the shapes coming towards him. _Missions._ No, handlers - no, no - _targets._

But their gear is black as night, emblazoned with that nightmarish symbol that makes the Asset shrink back. 

“No!” Bucky screams; the words stop but something is wrong. He's burning, no- freezing. Static clouds his thoughts and the Asset thrashes about in confusion. 

He can’t breathe. Lungs - lungs begged, pushed, gasped for air. None came. _Missiontargetshandlers_ closed in around it, the sounds of war all around, the familiar sound of a shield taking down opponents registering faintly. 

Then, 

“Ржавый,” _Rusted,_

Her voice broke through and Bucky sucked in a ragged breath. He could picture her, like so many times before, huge white sleepshirt on her slight frame as she held the red book in her hands, eyes wide with tears streaming down her face. As she repeated them, all she could do was watch Bucky, sworn to protect her, as he warped into something else right before her very eyes. Natalia continues; she is the only one who knows this is the only way to have any hope of saving the James Barnes now: once it’s started, it must be completed. It’s better if it’s her. 

“Печь,” _Furnace._

Somewhere through the clouds and searing pain between its eyes, the Bucky hears a voice demand, 

_“What the fuck are you doing?”_

Bucky would remember the terror in that voice decades before he was the Asset, when he was just a man clinging to a metal train car, reaching for the rest of his life. It had fallen away.

_“No!”_ That muffled, familiar voice screams and a smile almost tugs at the Asset’s lips. A hostile swings forward, trying to reach for the Asset: a shock of blond hair and strong, wide shoulders. The Asset reaches for a knife with swift fingers and then there’s blood soaking a thin, non-protective fabric; and it’s pooling over wide shoulders. It’s almost too familiar. A strangled sob escapes the target, 

_“Buck…”_

__Steve. Stevie, I’ll be okay, pal._ _

“Рассвет,” _Daybreak._ “семнадцать.” _Seventeen._

__I still love you, Sugar._ _

“Доброкачественный,” _Benign,_ “девять,” _Nine._

Bucky hears Steve, _Steve,_ as he screams his name, pleading and begging. Young Stark, in his red metal suit is holding him back from somewhere, Bucky is sure of it; fuck him, Bucky is _grateful_ for it. For each moment Bucky is burned from the inside out as his only hope, his Natalia, calls on the Asset and he’s goddamned grateful that Steve can only hear what’s going on. 

__No witnesses,_ something sinister whispers at the back of his mind. _

__

__I’ve loved you through all this shit._ _

__

“возвращение домой,” _Homecoming,_ “один,” _One._

__

The last of Bucky’s thoughts before he’s locked away trails hot tears down his face. 

__

__I’m with you ‘til the end of the line._ _

__

“грузовой автомобиль” _freight car._

__

_Then, there is only the Asset._

__


	9. When the Day Met The Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m going to refuse Stark’s offer,” Bucky tells the Asset when they’re alone again. 
> 
> You’re a fool to do that, the Asset retorts. 
> 
> “We protect each other. It’s worked for seventy years. And we kept Steve alive together. If it had been just one of us we couldn’t have done it.”
> 
> A sentimental fool. 
> 
> “We’ll just have to find out, then.”

It’s not cryo, but something _close._

It’s a slow awakening, that’s probably what helps Bucky keep his wits about him. Cryo was always too fast, too jarring, too violent of a wakeup. But this, this is different: a sort of in-between, rocking, wave-like rhythm between awareness of the outside world and the even calm of his mind. 

The Asset is here - Bucky can feel him. The presence is closer than he’s ever been, but for once, the Asset isn’t nervous. He’s sitting easily beside Bucky - unarmed, watching him with a look that could very closely pass for concern.

Gone are the dark tac vests and heavily armoured pants: instead it’s Bucky’s favorite sweater: white, soft, safe, and those pants the girls from LuluLemon were so keen to see him wearing. His long hair is pulled up into a tail. 

“Steve…” Bucky tries to ask the Asset. Even here, in the safety of subconscious, his thoughts are slow, sluggish. “Is he…?” 

_Successful extraction. Mission alive. Protect._ The Asset’s lips don’t move, but the words reverberate in Bucky’s mind nonetheless. 

As much as he’s able, Bucky relaxes. 

“Natalia, Sam… Tony?” 

_Team intact._

It’s then that Bucky flows into consciousness, just slightly, just _enough._

There’s something in his nose, something in his throat, another flimsy plastic mask over his face. A terrible, sickening grinding sound and the all-too familiar white-hot pain blazing out from his left shoulder. Starks words came floating back,

_“Designed to separate the arm from the body from the inside,”_

_Maintenance._

For a terrified moment, Bucky thinks the Asset has lied; that no one made it out and he’d led them all into the hands of the Red Room. From his thoughts bubble up the Asset, more soothing than Bucky has ever witnessed before.

 _Listen,_ the Asset wills. Bucky complies. There are no shadows or shapes, only voices in the darkness of semi-consciousness. 

“Stable yesterday, stable today.” That’s Stark. 

Bucky can imagine him walking around in his workshop surrounded by the robots and tools. 

“Honestly, Cap,” 

Bucky’s mind jolts, coiled tight in relief and excitement. 

_Steve._

But Stark’s voice continues, a gentle tone; playful yet sympathetic. “If you bothered to carry your phone anywhere you could just check up on him with the app I put on it. All his vitals, stats, even a video feed. Just the right amount of creepy sleep-watching for you.” 

“I know, Tony, thank you.” Steve.

_Steve._

His voice sounds so tired. Bucky can hear the fatigue graveling deep; can imagine those worry lines in Steve’s forehead, the lines he’d spent his life trying to chase away, as permanent features. This is the voice wracked with guilt and loss that Bucky has heard only once in his life: After the death of Sara Rogers.

A sudden ache grips Bucky, the familiar, overwhelming weight of guilt and sorrow. He wants to call out to Steve, to let him put those big, dumb hands on his face and hold him close. They’ll have to talk about their argument, of course; the stupid one about what really happened that night in France.  
But-

“What’s that?” Steve’s voice is, in an instant, methodical and demanding. 

“He must know you’re here.” Comes Stark’s answer. “He can hear us. Figured since everything’s closed off and sterile to prevent contamination while his body adjusts, we might as well put audio in. There’s been studies that prove patients in his condition can hear and mentally react to stimuli. Plus, I assumed you’d wanna talk to him.”

“That’s him… reacting… to me?” 

“Yeah, with brainwaves. That’s the only part not on your app, actually. Here’s all the vitals, this here is monitoring the shoulder and this one here is the drip. Here you’ve got the feeding tube, and the Foley-” 

“How long…?” 

“Right now, assuming his body accepts the new bracing and skin grafts flawlessly, probably two weeks. If we run into problems… a month, if we can catch things in time.” 

“In time.” Steve’s voice is a hushed murmur. Bucky can almost see Steve withdrawing into himself. 

Stark clears his throat. 

“I’m going to get a drink, check with Pepper on a couple of things. Just tell Friday if you need anything. I left all the profiles on the table for you, Cap. Doctors, surgeons, specialists in bioengineering, biomechanics and prosthetics. In case you wanted to read through.”

“Tony,” Steve’s voice is strangled, caught. “Thank you.” 

“Yeah well.. I went through Dad’s archives and found some designs by SHIELD that had his signature on them… along with that weasel Schmidtt. Turns out, the bright idea of turning missing limbs into weapons was something my dear old Dad had been hiding from Peggy and the rest of SHIELD. Those schematics were how I fixed Terminator’s arm so quickly before. I guess… call this taking a stab at rectifying my father’s mistakes.”

Then, there is silence. For how long, Bucky isn’t sure. But somehow he knows Steve hasn’t left, that he must still be sitting nearby. 

Moments, minutes, hours later, Steve starts to cry. 

_Oh, for fuck’s sake._

Bucky hears sniffles, sobs, and shaky breaths until, 

“Sorry, Buck…” A few sloppy sounds - maybe he’s blowing his nose. A few more moments. “Doctor Collins says there’s nothing wrong with catharsis… I’ve been going to therapy, did I tell you that? Twice a week, so far, though it's only been two weeks. Poor guy, Tony really put him through the ringer as far as a background checks go, but he’s one of Banner’s colleagues from back in the day. I guess they used to teach at the same university. Anyways, we’re… working through a lot of things.”

 _About damn time, punk._ Bucky wants to simultaneously roll his eyes and wrap Steve up in his arms. 

“I know I haven’t done my best by you lately, and I’m sorry for that… I’m… I mean, you’re right. I’ve been treating you like some kind of ghost trapped in the 40s. But you’re not. I know that for certain now. You’re so much more. You’ve made your own life here and I’m… ” Steve clears his throat and sniffles. “I’m really proud of you, and I’m so sorry for bringing you into all of this. I should have just… God.” 

There’s some scraping noises, the obvious sound of something being thrown; crashing. 

_Steve,_ Bucky wants to whisper. _Oh, Sugar._

Bucky sits beside the Asset again. Seemingly in meditation, the Asset takes a deep, even breath. 

_If we’re patient, the technician will heal us._

It’s a complete thought; hopeful, intentional, and far more innocent than Bucky’s ever experienced from the Asset. 

_When we’re healed, the technician will ask if you’d like to kill the Asset._

“How?” 

_They’ve found a way to drive the Asset out; to make the Soldier’s body his own again._

“But you protected me,” Bucky finds himself thinking. 

It’s true: throughout Red Room and Hydra years, the Asset had tucked Bucky away, safe and hidden in the recesses of a seemingly hollow mind. The Asset had seen the good in Natalia and confided in her about the soldier; of Steve. 

_Steve._

Ultimately it was the Asset who recognized Steve, afterwhich both Bucky and the Asset agreed on one thing: Protect Steve. 

“Back in the base… when they said the… words…” Bucky manages. 

__Natalia is a benevolent Handler. The Asset supplies. In her hands the mission never faltered: protect. Static occured and Steve was wounded. The Handler assured full recovery would be made. Overall mission success. Considerable injuries sustained. Deactivation to preserve weapon was critical._ _

“Deactivation…” Bucky wonders. 

“мать медведь,” Natalia’s voice brings Bucky almost to the surface. She, it seems, is his next visitor. He wonders how much time has passed. 

“Steve’s been coming for a couple of weeks,” She supplies. “It’s been about a month since the mission.” 

_Clever girl._

“We’ve kept you under because Tony rebuilt your arm. It was shattered in the raid and there was just… it was everywhere. The braces were completely snapped. They basically hollowed out your shoulder and had to rebuild everything from scratch. Once your body accepts the new bracing and skin grafts, he’s building you an arm that you’ll be able to detach. Rolling joints, he calls them. Much lighter than the arm that they gave you. We’ve seen it- better looking, too. Steve’s added something I know you’ll like. But I promised I wouldn’t tell.” 

There are a few moments of silence. Then, 

“Mind if I join you?” 

__Sam Fucking Wilson._ _

“Not at all,” Natalia’s voice is soothing. “I was just filling James in, catching him up. I know Steve wouldn’t tell him much about what’s happened. I think between James and the Asset he’s not lacking much, though.” 

“Well, Barnes,” Sam Wilson’s voice is light, relieved. “I can tell you that your boy is doing astounding. Therapy twice a week! It’s really seeming to work out. I mean, he blamed himself a lot at first, but I think that he’s finally understanding to accept everything that’s happened to the two of you, hopefully gonna use it all to move forward. Let’s be honest, that’s all any of us have wanted for him.” Sam Wilson’s signature chuckle reverberates around the room, “Man, when he brought those rings to Stark- ow! What?” 

“I think that’s something to save for when James wakes up,” Natalia’s voice scolds lightly, almost teasing. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Sam Wilson chuckles. 

“I’m going to refuse Stark’s offer,” Bucky tells the Asset when they’re alone again. 

_You’re a fool to do that,_ the Asset retorts. 

“We protect each other. It’s worked for seventy years. And we kept Steve alive together. If it had been just one of us we couldn’t have done it.” 

_A sentimental fool._

“We’ll just have to find out, then.” 

When Bucky finally opens his eyes, there’s a weight on his thigh. 

It’s Steve, Bucky knows because he can smell his cologne. He tries his best to murmur Steve’s name, but it comes out as a choked groan. His throat is on fire.

Steve jumps up, the sturdy weight on Bucky’s leg leaves, and there’s a paper cup at his lips in an instant. Ice chips. 

His jaw is heavy and the act of opening his lips just enough to let some of the tiny pieces of ice pass onto his tongue is exhausting. He lets them melt and does his best to swallow the liquid they provide: still painful. 

His breath is ragged, but his eyes focus clearly and then there he is: Steve. Bright and real and so, so close. He’s dropped to his knees beside the bed and has finally put a big, dumb hand to Bucky’s face. His eyes are welling up, and if Bucky wasn’t so drained he’d roll his eyes and think of some stupid remark. 

"I love you,” Steve whispers. 

Bucky wants to smooth those lines in Steve’s forehead, to say he loves him, too, but his eyes are so, so heavy. 

“...so much longer than expected…” 

That’s a soft voice, an old one. Cool, frail fingers are caught in Bucky’s own. There’s a flimsy mask around his mouth and nose and everything is so bright - even from behind his eyelids it’s too bright. 

“He’ll pull through.” Another voice supplies. Strained, as if spoken through gritted teeth. 

_Handler,_ the Asset purrs. Bucky can feel the Asset pushing to get to the surface, to open their eyes and demonstrate its faithfulness. 

OC and Ms. Edna, he realizes finally. 

Ms. Edna strokes the back of Bucky’s hand with her gentle fingers. In the silence that follows, the Asset counts OC’s sighs. When they’ve reached eight, Bucky manages to squeeze Ms. Edna’s hand: gentle. 

A pair of lips press a kiss to his forehead as Ms. Edna squeezes back with equal pressure. A sniffle, and Bucky knows she’s tearing up. He wants to sit up and hold her close, to promise that he’s okay. But now, even though the tube has left his throat, he knows there is still one intruding down his nose and into his stomach. He knows that after all this, he’s going to have to go back and relearn how to piss and shit and eat again. The idea is exhausting. He can’t even open his eyes. 

The next time he could open his eyes and draw in an easy breath, everything was clearer. 

And there was also a pair of blue eyes regarding him from across the room. Deft fingers were curled around a charcoal pencil, hand halfway through a small black leather bound sketchbook. It was the same one that days, weeks - maybe months before, had been rejected. 

Bucky can tell that it’s more than half-full now, and in a panic he reaches his fingers to his face to feel the stubble there, but there is none. Someone’s shaved his face. 

All at once he’s abandoned his train of thought in favor of looking at the hand touching his face. Black alloy shines with plates interrupted by shiny gold. No whirring, no screeching cogs or internal whining. 

Seamless, the plates ripple to reflect every muscle movement. The arm is light, lighter than the one that he had been used to for so, so long. He reaches out to touch the alloy with his flesh hand, running his fingertips along the grooves and marveling at the sameness in temperature when something catches his eye: 

Scraped and weathered, straight out of some old archives boxes from 1945, a wedding band sits welded to his left-hand ring finger. It’s a solid, unwavering, wordless apology and promise of a future. 

Bucky’s next deep breath is hitched and the scene around him blurs into the dark green of the winter forest back in France, looking up into those blue eyes that hadn’t yet seen the worst from loving a weapon. 

“I uh…” 

Steve clears his throat and snaps Bucky back to the white, sterile scene of Stark Tower: hospital bed, gown, no more tubes. Wires: monitors to his chest and legs, arms and temples. He doesn’t have to move too much to know that some poor unfortunate person has been having to put those damn diapers on him, and that now there’s no way he’ll be granted the dignity of training himself alone. But now, Steve is shuffling over to a chair beside the bed to flopped down into it. 

The first thing that Bucky notices is that no one has been shaving Steve’s face. 

The stubble is long, almost a full-fledged beard now, and if Bucky didn’t know any better he’d wager his last pack of Luckies that Steve’s been trimming it to look more polished. As polished as scruff can be. 

“I hope you don’t mind,” Steve continues, clearing his throat. “I-I called in a couple of favors to get those out of some archives… I found yours in Azzano, right after…” A hard swallow and a sniffle. 

Oh jeez: fucking tears again. 

“Right after I got you back that first time, remember? God, I never…” And he’s squeezing the bridge of his nose, trying to hold himself together. Those broad shoulders are already shaking, and from where he’s laying on the hospital bed, Bucky can barely lift his head to see. He settles instead for reaching out his hand, the new one with the damned ancient ring on it, to wrap his fingers around Steve’s wrist. An honest to God sob escapes the kid’s throat. 

_Lord have mercy._

“I was gonna give it to you… but I just waited too long, I guess. I never thought any moment was right. That night in France, I had mine, too, for a couple of weeks. Picked it up at a pawn shop somewhere in Germany probably, I can't even remember now.” 

And that's when Bucky feels the cool metal of another gold band, the one circling Steve’s finger. They’re not identical matches, but they’re similar enough.

“I know this doesn't solve anything or make everything okay, there's still so much that I've done...” Another sob escapes Steve, and another, until he’s burying his face in Bucky’s bed covers, staining them with snot. 

Didn’t someone mention something about sterility during one of Bucky’s lucid moments in the last few days? This cannot be up to code: Blubbering super soldiers, very unhygienic. 

“I don’t know why I told you it wasn’t real, Buck, of course it was fucking real to me… just- these months having you here, it was like slipping back into old habits and hiding everything. You were right, I guess, I never did make it back from that damn war.” Steve looks up at him now, and the expression on his face is so awestruck that it sends one of Bucky’s monitors into a frenzy. He tries to deepen his breathing, to try and calm the thing down because he doesn't want to miss Steve’s words. 

“You did, though.” Steve tells him. “You came home from the war, from Hydra, the Red Room, all of it. And you came home to me.” 

Bucky wants to make a smart remark, but he knows better. He can only nod. 

“And I just treated you like some ghost of who you used to be, like you weren’t going to stick around or like I could just go back to before the war and neither of us would have any problems.” Steve takes a long, shaky breath, “Sam sent me to a therapist,” He admits in what is barely a whisper. 

Bucky can’t help the grin that spreads over his face. 

__Thank God for Sam Fucking Wilson._ _

__**EPILOGUE** _ _

The bike is a classic: jet black and meticulously cared for, Bucky can tell. There are no helmets in sight as Steve swings a leg to straddle the machine, his leather jacket riding up to expose some of the skin at his hip. 

Steve had come to pick Bucky up from a checkup at Stark tower, and it hadn’t even been his first time on the bike, but something about this time - all he can do is stare at the waistband of Steve’s jeans riding just too low and the band of his underwear peeking out from beneath, the jacket’s material tightening over his shoulders so, so nicely and oh - 

__OH._ _

Bucky’s mouth suddenly feels dry, his legs and brain going weak. His feet feel heavier than any 10-hour dock shift he may have worked back before the war, but they carry him faithfully so he’s flush against Steve in no time, arms trailing down his sides to rest on the front of his thighs. 

He hears Steve clear his throat and watches him bring a hand up to rub at the back of his neck; practically feeling the blush radiating off him. Bucky knows Steve’s tells even though it can still be a blur: a messy run-together snippet of a language he never thought he’d get the chance to practice again, an old code that never failed. But now it’s his every day. 

And right now, Steve’s body is transmitting and Bucky’s is receiving. 

_Understood,_ he wills his body to reply. 

From his seat behind Steve, Bucky presses his chest to his back, dragging his hands heavily from Steve’s knees all the way up to his hips, latching his fingers through the loops of his jeans. Expertly, he rests his cheek on Steve’s broad shoulder and turns his face in, his lips ghosting on Steve’s neck. 

“Ready.” He informs. This. _This was something he’d always known how to do._

He both hears and feels Steve’s breath hitch, sending a shiver down his spine. Clearly something was different about this time. 

Steve starts the bike and it roars to life under them before settling on a rumbling purr. Bucky tucks his feet up onto the foot rests and slides his hands around Steve’s waist proper, feeling the muscle ripple beneath at the touch. Bucky feels a smile pulling at his lips, a tight sensation in his chest he hadn’t realized was there worms its way out and exits his body in the form of a sigh. 

Despite their meager meeting, Stark had really outdone himself. The arm is silent, calibrated and efficient. There’s no tight pressure on any cogs or wires within, and when he splays his fingers over the expanse of Steve’s abdomen as he balances the bike and revs the throttle, he can feel the heat there. 

The bike takes off and Bucky tightens his hold, thrusting his hips forward with a transmission of his own, one that’s days, weeks, _decades_ late but is very suddenly the only thing Bucky wants Steve to know. His dick is officially back in action. 

Bucky feels, rather than hears, the rumbling growl through Steve’s body over the roar of the bike, getting the message clear as day: Received. 

A little wave of panic ripples through Bucky at that moment because he knows. Hell, does he know, that just like all those years ago, this isn’t going to be one of those slow, sweet explorations they’d been working on. Not this time. There’s been too many years and too much aching. 

Tonight, someone is getting _wrecked._ Bucky can’t help the swelling occurring below his waistband because it was certainly not going to be the bike and it sure as fuck ain’t _Steve._

Steve navigates the streets expertly and all too soon but not soon enough, they tumble through the door of the apartment. Something crinkles underfoot and the Asset bristles; Bucky takes a quick step back to pick up the mail from where it has been shoved through the slot onto the floor, grinning. It was all for Steve, as usual, but recently it makes his smile even bigger. He shows off one of the envelopes to Steve.

_Steven G. Barnes_  
2817 Forest St  
Apt 312  
New York, NY 

Steve’s hands are on Bucky instantly, in his hair, on his face, and his lips are aggressive. Bucky finds himself shoved against the wall, mail dropping back to the floor as he struggles to toe off his boots and reach down to tear his socks off his feet. He grunts at the odd angle, then needs to take his lips away from Steve’s, but Steve always knew just what to do. 

Steve takes the free moment to strip his jacket and shirt in one fluid motion and manages to force down the zipper of his jeans, pushing them and his underwear down to his ankles before realizing that his shoes are still on. He hastily steps on each heel and slips out of them, yanking off his socks. 

Bucky’s only just freed his feet, yet here stands Steve, completely naked before him, chest heaving, pupils blown in the evening light of the apartment. That wild look on his face is enough for Bucky’s body to completely get with the program, blood rushing loudly in his ears as his fingers are suddenly fumbling, clumsy. 

All at once they’re sixteen again and Steve, Steve, is prowling towards Bucky who is neither worthy nor deserving. For all his chalked up skill with the dames, Steve remains paramount in ways of experience: _take me apart then put me back together, all at once._ He’d wanted him back before the war, then during, and now, _especially now;_ through some twisted, devilish intervention his body is begging for it again. Bucky’s begging with every fibre of his being and Steve - Steve complies. 

“Baby,” Steve whispers gently and reaches to wind his fingers around Bucky’s wrists. Bucky stills and Steve chuckles, “breathe,” he encourages. Bucky sucks air into his lungs, forces it back out. Repeats. Steve slowly lifts Bucky’s shirt over his head and kisses him so slow and gentle that it stabs him through the heart, spilling over with the million-dollar question Bucky has been asking since 1929. 

_What the ever loving fuck has J.B. Barnes ever done to deserve Steven Grant Rogers._

Steve has no answer for him, only the heat of his lips drifting down Bucky’s collarbone to make contact with the seam of his left arm where metal meets flesh, a clean and smooth addition to what used to be angry scarring. 

Steve’s palms press hard and warm against Bucky’s chest and before he knows what’s happening Steve’s got his nipples between each thumb and forefinger. A low, primal groan tears from Bucky’s throat, his head falling back hard against the wall. It’s all he can do hold himself up on his own two feet, body stiff and trembling. Steve must sense this, because he drops to his knees, trailing his mouth down from Bucky’s chest as his fingers abandon his nipples in order to unbutton, unzip, and tug down Bucky’s pants. 

“Baby…” Steve breathes. He sets his forehead against Bucky’s left hip and winds his hands around to grip Bucky’s ass cheeks, rough; possessive. 

Bucky tries to respond, tries to form Steve’s name in his mouth, but all that he manages is a hiss through his teeth as his fingers knot in that mess of blond hair. He can’t help the forward rocking of his hips as his knees wobble beneath him. Steve chuckles against his skin, his lips close, so close to the sensitive spot on Bucky’s inner thigh. He’s aching now, no confusion in his body about what to do: his cock stands at full-mast and he wants to plead, to beg Steve in all the ways he’s ever begged him before. 

After pulling off the rest of Bucky’s pants, Steve gets himself to his feet and presses hard against Bucky, hands still hot on his ass. They tighten their hold, those hands, and then Bucky’s manhandled, legs wrapping around Steve’s waist as he’s hefted up. Steve begins to trek towards the bedroom, easily carrying him, dropping Bucky none too gently in the bedroom. His head smacks against the mattress and they both chuckle for a moment: that’s always been a rough landing. 

But then Steve’s caging him in between his elbows and the laugh is forgotten for the hungry look in those blue eyes. 

“God.” Bucky manages to croak. Steve’s mouth is on his neck, wet and heavy. 

“Remind me to thank him for you, Buck.” Steve murmurs as they grind their bodies against each other. There’s a scoff and a witty retort caught in Bucky’s throat that he never gets out. 

Steve’s hand shoots out to Bucky’s side and he can hear him rooting around blindly, his concentration elsewhere as he shuffles through the bedside drawer for a bottle of slick. Both too soon and not soon enough, Steve’s got it, pouring it into his hand and slipping the other beneath Bucky’s hips. That familiar ache and tightness powers through his whole body as Steve begins to work him with steady fingers, an old but familiar sensation as he kisses along Bucky’s tightened jaw. 

“There, baby,” His voice is low and husky, utterly golden in the setting sun pouring through their window. “Take a breath and relax for me… I’ll always make you feel good.” 

Bucky complies and Steve works his fingers in deeper, 

“Yeah,” he praises as Bucky closes his eyes. “Yeah. Always so patient with me, Buck. Wasn’t ever any hope for anyone else but you. It was always you.” 

Bucky’s grounded by the sound of Steve’s gravelly voice wafting in and out of his mind as it takes over his body. Each new, wider, deeper stretch is praised with low, sincere words. 

“I’ve got you, Buck, we’re back where we belong- I’m sorry it took so long but we’re back now, that’s it, baby, yeah. I’m going to spend years making up the time we’d lost… we’ll go everywhere we’ve always wanted and we’ll wind up just like this in every place. I’ll draw you every time, Buck. ‘wanna draw you looking just like this-” 

Once Steve removes his fingers and lines up his cock, Bucky opens his eyes to meets Steve’s gaze. This was always Steve’s part - wanting to know Bucky was with him. Even back when he’d been frail, he insisted that Bucky could tell him where they were just before they become totally lost in one another. 

_Maybe, just maybe, some cosmic piece of Steve knew they’d end up here one day: Steve, larger than life and this time Bucky clinging to the concept of mortality with both hands, held in place only by a soul too familiar to ever really forget._

“Where are we, Baby?” Steve asks in a whisper. He sets his palm against Bucky’s cheek and Bucky leans into the touch. 

_It doesn’t matter,_ Bucky wants to tell him, _it doesn’t matter where we are because you’ll always look for me and I’ll always find my way back. I never needed a compass because you were it for me._

“In the apartment,” He barely manages instead, “It’s twenty-fucking-fourteen and we’ve been out of time for almost a decade and I tired to fucking kill you almost two years ago, but Steve-” He swallows hard, and Steve leans into his body, nearly lined up now. “God, Sugar, somehow we’re back right where we started and I love you. I never forgot you and God dammit I’ve always loved you.” 

“I love you, Buck.” Steve presses himself into Bucky and he keens, gripping those huge shoulders above him just as he’d done before the war. Except the bruises left behind this time will fade by morning, but that doesn’t matter. Because even then, the entire goddamn world knows now that Steven Grant Rogers belongs to James Buchanan Barnes 


End file.
